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By Anna J. Park
As the COVID-19 becomes a global pandemic, the pneumonia-causing pathogen's social and economic impact is changing people's work and lifestyles. People voluntarily spend more time at home, canceling or delaying most social appointments. Online shopping has increased and revenues of the gaming industry are also on the rise.
One of the other major changes due to the spread of the virus is that more companies in Korea allow employees to work from home. Major global businesses, such as Apple and Microsoft, also recommended their workforce to work remotely.
A recent report by Hana Financial Investment pointed out that so-called "telecommuting," or working from home, has been increasing since the 2000s with the rapid development of information technology, and it was to grow in the near future, even without the impact of COVID-19.
However the report stressed that the current COVID-19 crisis would provide momentum for further growth of the telecommuting trend in Korea.
The report quoted a census result that the percentage of the U.S. workforce who are telecommuting has hovered over five percent since 2016. According to a recent survey, 46 percent of companies in Japan allowed a work-from-home option for employees due to the novel coronavirus.
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"I think the general trend of the working conditions in Korea will follow that of other advanced countries where the work-from-home option is more widely adopted," Kim Hoon-gil, analyst at Hana Financial Investment, and who wrote the report, told The Korea Times.
"The share of telecommuting workforce in Korea was very low so far, yet the current COVID-19 situation will provide a chance for companies to realize the necessity of increasing the work-from-home workforce. The telecommuting-related market will also grow to the level of other advanced countries," the analyst said.
He added that once the market is expanded, the work-from-home culture will continue to grow gradually, even after the end of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the report, telecommuting is largely based on the development of IT infrastructure systems, such as video conferencing, clouding computing, and cyber security. Since these functions have become prevalent in societies over the past 10 years, the work-from-home trend still remains in its very early phase, but is expected to increase over the next decades.
"In line with the rise in the telecommuting workforce, there will be a growing demand for online shopping, online education, and online platforms," the analyst said, stressing that the online market is expected to see much more growth from the perspective of global investment.
Against this backdrop, investors are advised to take heed of investment opportunities in industry-related ETFs, spanning from internet-based software companies to global cloud computing industries. Businesses of telemedicine, wearable devices, game and online content makers are also worth noticing for future growth.
For example, one of the representative cloud computing ETFs is the Global X Cloud Computing (CLOU), which has amassed the assent under management of some $439 million in less than a year, since the ETF went public April last year.
FDN ETF is also recommended, in which one fifth of the portfolio is Amazon, which operate AWS, the world's top cloud computing software. Stocks of other global IT blue chips, like Cisco and Google, are also included in the ETF.
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