Remote work: it’s thriving in rural areas too!

Expert

Among the French who choose to move from urban areas to the countryside are, notably, remote workers. According to the 2023 POPSU study on the urban exodus (1), these include intermediate occupations and working-class households who, by relocating from cities to rural areas, extend their daily commutes thanks to remote work and are being pushed out of cities or nearby suburbs where the cost of buying a home—especially a single-family house—has become prohibitive. They also include senior executives and highly qualified professionals, relatively affluent and over 40, who combine high mobility with remote work: some keep their city jobs, alternating telework with long-distance commuting, while others work entirely from home.
This movement, which began during the COVID-19 health crisis, raises the question: is it still continuing today, and to what extent?

 

An underestimated rural renaissance

The first part of the answer is that a rural renaissance is still underway today—certainly not an “urban exodus,” a term overused during the COVID-19 health crisis.
According to INSEE, areas outside urban attraction zones (AAVs)—in other words, rural areas—recorded in 2022 1.36 in-movers for every 1 out-mover from these AAVs. This is slightly lower than during the COVID period (1.37 in 2020 and 1.42 in 2021), but higher than in 2018 and 2019 (1.25) (2). These figures are confirmed by other indicators: birthplace geography (3), trends in property transfer duties (4), and numerous reports from local elected officials (5). Admittedly, this rebound is uneven and primarily affects the southwest of the Saint-Malo/Geneva line. And indeed, the POPSU study and more recent work by Jérôme Fourquet (6) point out that the health crisis led to both a rural revival and, even more, to coastalization and mega-periurbanization—the spread toward distant suburban rings around major French metropolitan areas.

All of this is true, but slightly misleading. The rural renaissance is underestimated because studies like POPSU and INSEE generally rely on the AAV zoning system. Yet some geographers, such as Gérard-François Dumont and Olivier Bouba-Olga, argue that AAVs define “urban” too broadly, classifying 93 % of the French metropolitan population as urban.

By contrast, using the new 2020 INSEE municipal density grid, which aligns more closely with how people perceive rurality and classifies roughly one-third of France’s population as rural, would point to a much stronger rural renaissance.

While this trend naturally benefits peri-urban and retro-coastal areas, it also significantly impacts rural territories themselves, notably within what Jérôme Fourquet calls France’s “fertile crescent”—stretching from Brittany to the Basque Country, across the entire South, and back up into the Jura.

 

Remote work has indeed grown in rural areas

Why does the rural renaissance continue at a level higher than in 2019?
Is it the enduring appeal of rural living, amplified by the COVID-19 period, or the current economic climate, which has increased the attractiveness of the countryside where land remains far less expensive?
This is the hypothesis we put forward in Urban Exodus: You’ve Been Misled!

But beyond these two factors, there is a third explanation: remote work.
For the first time in the history of employment, telework makes it possible to break free from the physical location of one’s company—often in a city—to choose where to live, including in rural areas.

In 2019, only 4 % of French workers teleworked regularly. By the last week of March 2020, that figure had jumped to 30 % (7).
After peaking at 27 % and 28 % of private-sector employees working from home at least once a month during the lockdowns of November 2020 and April 2021, telework stabilized between 20 % and 25 % in 2022 and stood at 22 % in early 2024 (7).
Since 2022, the average has remained steady at 1.5 to 2 days per week, reaching 1.9 days in the first half of 2024 (7).

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But Does Remote Work Benefit Rural Areas?

According to an IGEDD report (8), in 2023 telework involved 22 % of employees living in agglomerations of over 200,000 inhabitants (and 43 % in Paris), more than in their surrounding suburbs or smaller urban units.
Outside urban units, only 11 % of employees telework. Clearly, telework benefits rural areas less, since many rural jobs—such as in agriculture, industry, and crafts—are not teleworkable.

INSEE notes that half of the jobs in the Île-de-France region are teleworkable, compared with only one-third in more rural regions such as Burgundy–Franche-Comté or Normandy.
Yet even if the share remains modest, the number of rural teleworkers is higher than before the pandemic, and some are newcomers who have moved since then.

It is also important to note how rurality is defined.
INSEE considers an “urban unit” to be a municipality or group of municipalities with a built-up area of at least 2,000 inhabitants and no more than 200 meters between dwellings.
Under this definition, 78 % of France is classified as urban and 22 % as rural.
However, if we use the new 2020 INSEE municipal density grid (9), which identifies roughly one-third of the population as rural, the share of rural teleworkers would not be 11 % but around 16.5 % (10).

Importantly, INSEE’s employment surveys do account for actual places of residence, including secondary homes that have quietly become primary residences, so there is no undercounting of rural telework from this angle.

 

The farther from the workplace, the more telework

Company-level agreements have also played a role: only 390 and 1,490 agreements were signed in 2017 and 2019, but 2,760 in 2020 and 4,070 in 2021 (11)—not counting those in the public sector.
“Companies that have reduced office space and energy costs are not going back,” says Gérard-François Dumont (12), noting that agreements now incorporate cybersecurity measures and often include allowances for employees’ IT expenses.

Unions have shifted too.
“The CGT, once opposed to telework for fear of weakening workplace solidarity and oversight, now views it as a tool for quality of life and well-being,” observes Xavier de Mazenod, founder of Ze Village, a digital platform bridging city and countryside.
Companies have likewise learned how to manage remotely.

Some employers, however, have scaled back:

• Société Générale announced in June 2025 that staff would be limited to one telework day per week, down from two (13).
• Free cut telework to six days per month, banning two consecutive days and limiting Friday telework to twice per month (14).

These decisions have sparked strikes, but they remain exceptions.
A Robert Walters survey (Dec. 2024) found that 72 % of companies made no changes to office attendance over the previous year, while 23 % actually increased telework by one or two days (15).
Telework has therefore stabilized and is now part of salary and recruitment negotiations—both ways: employers can gauge whether limited telework deters candidates, and candidates can condition their acceptance on a minimum number of remote days.

INSEE notes that the likelihood of teleworking is 12.2 percentage points higher for people living over 100 km from their workplace than for those living less than 5 km away, with intermediate distances showing a gradual increase (7).
Some company agreements also specify a maximum distance—50 or 100 km—from the office, adds Xavier de Mazenod.

As he points out, working two days a week from a home 50 km from the city means living more rural than urban.
That’s why Gérard-François Dumont prefers the term “mega-para-urbanization,” which avoids the dominant-center connotation of “peri-urbanization.”

Ultimately, by relying on urban-centric indicators, most studies underestimate the impact of both the rural renaissance and rural telework.
Even small numbers matter: just a few extra families can save a village school.

These new arrivals require an appropriate state response.
Yet at a time of budget cuts, schools, public services, hospitals, maternity wards, and rail lines are still at risk of closure.
It is high time for territorial planning to regain its former status as an essential state responsibility, as it was between the 1960s and 2000s with the DATAR (Délégation à l'aménagement du territoire et à l'action régionale).

When 81 % of French people consistently say—survey after survey (IFOP/Familles Rurales 2018 and 2023)—that their ideal life is in the countryside, the government would be wise to rebalance public investment across the national territory.

Urban Exodus: You’ve Been Misled!

In his latest book, Frédéric Ville—drawing on numerous studies—deciphers a lasting rural renaissance. He goes on to outline a typology of new rural inhabitants, map out the networks that support them, and highlight the political and regional planning issues at stake. Available at: www.salienteseditions.fr/exode-urbain

 

 

 

(1) MILET, Hélène (ed.). Urban Exodus: Myth and Realities. Plan urbanisme construction architecture, February 2023, 52 p. https://www.urbanisme-puca.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/dp_exodeurbain_bd.pdf

(2) INSEE. Health crisis and the development of remote work: more departures from the cores of major metropolitan areas and from the Paris region. Insee Analyses No. 81, 16 March 2023. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6966059

(3) DUMONT, Gérard-François. France: a reshaping of population patterns? Population & Avenir, No. 762, March–April 2023, pp. 17–19.

(4) VILLE, Frédéric. Urban Exodus: You’ve Been Misled! December 2024, pp. 38–43.

(5) Ibid., pp. 22–23.

(6) FOURQUET, Jérôme; MANTERNACH, Sylvain. Race to the Sea and the Pursuit of Urban Sprawl: The COVID-19 Crisis Amplified Ongoing Population Movements, April 2024. https://www.jean-jaures.org/publication/course-a-la-mer-et-poursuite-de-letalement-urbain-la-crise-du-covid-19-a-amplifie-les-mouvements-de-population-deja-a-loeuvre/

(7) INSEE. Remote work and on-site presence: hybrid work, a practice now firmly rooted in companies. Insee Analyses No. 105, 5 March 2025. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/8379375

(8) IGEDD. The Territorial Impacts of Remote Work: a Blind Spot in Public Policies, November 2024, 152 p. https://www.strategie-plan.gouv.fr/publications/impacts-territoriaux-teletravail-angle-mort-politiques-publiques

(9) 1 km² cells with a density ≥ 300 inhabitants/km² are considered “dense.” Dense areas are constructed by aggregating contiguous cells of the same type (aggregates with a population of at least 5,000). Cells not part of dense aggregates are considered “sparsely populated.” This definition is inspired by Eurostat’s method (municipal density grid) under which, outside Île-de-France, 40 % of the French population is classified as rural.

(10) In the absence of more precise data, we extrapolated the 11 % figure using a simple rule of three.

(11) DARES. Company agreements on remote work: what uses during the health crisis? Dares Analyses No. 57, November 2022, 8 p. https://dares.travail-emploi.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/c37292c3ff7e8dc74217e5e013888423/DA_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9travail_accords.pdf

(12) VILLE, Frédéric. Op. cit., p. 45.

(13) https://www.agefi.fr/news/banque-assurance/la-societe-generale-fait-marche-arriere-sur-le-teletravail?utm_source=chatgpt.com

(14) https://www.novethic.fr/economie-et-social/transformation-de-leconomie/free-societe-generale-greve-salaries-opposent-fin-teletravail#:~:text=Au%20travers%20d'une%20nouvelle,deux%20jours%20cons%C3%A9cutifs%20sera%20interdit.

(15) https://www.robertwalters.fr/eclairages/news/blog/7-entreprises-sur-10-n-ont-pas-modifie-politique-teletravail.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com – Survey of over 300 companies in France, October 2024.

Release date: September 2025