If you’ve been laid off, are just entering the job market, or are just looking for something different to do professionally, working jobs from home has become an exceedingly attractive – and available – option. During this prolonged economic recovery when employers are still reluctant to hire permanent workers, so many people have opted for “work from home” jobs that they’ve become one of the hottest opportunities for employment today.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics stated recently that:
- There are over 20 million home-based businesses generating more than $430 billion in annual revenue.
- A full 52 percent of all small businesses are now based in the home.
- Every 11 seconds, someone starts another home-based business here in the U.S.
- 25% of home businesses today generate 100% of the business owner’s personal income.
- Office workers, on average, are productive less than six hours per day, while at-home workers or telecommuters are productive just over seven hours for each eight hour business day.
Why the significant shift away from the traditional office-based jobs to work-from-home jobs? Well, there are several basic factors influencing this major transformation in American business:
Businesses are being squeezed economically. As profit margins continue to shrink for many companies, they tend to focus on cost containment or avoidance strategies. It costs many thousands of dollars per employee for a business to provide a comfortable, safe working environment, utilities, furniture, and parking to its in-office workers. If the services that its employees perform can be performed instead at home, substantial savings that go directly to the bottom line are immediately realized by the employer.
Computers and the Internet. Let’s face it – our world changed forever with the introduction of personal computers and high-speed internet access. The internet is transforming how business is conducted today, just as Henry Ford’s assembly line catapulted our agricultural economy into an industrialized one. Cheap, easy-to-use, and widely available computers and broadband internet access are the primary tools of business today – and now they can also be found in just about any home in the country.
The demographics of today’s worker. Yesterday’s workers prized job security, predictability, and longevity over many other possible attributes of the workplace, frequently finding themselves working for a single employer or perhaps two over the full course of their careers. Today’s worker, by contrast, has grown up surrounded by all this highly enabling technology, and intuitively understands that it has never been a more entrepreneurial time in this nation’s history than now. They want more than just a paycheck; they want job satisfaction, flexibility, and the ability to express themselves professionally.
Saving money is like making money. When you add it all up, the costs of having to physically go to an office to do your job can be quite staggering. Transportation costs are significant, and when you throw in the cost of work clothes, restaurant lunches, parking, and all the other incidental costs, you’re talking about surrendering a significant portion of your paycheck every month. And can you really put a dollar value on all the time savings you realize when you don′t have to drive back and forth to an office every day?
So if you’re currently considering something other than a typical 8 – 5 office job routine, now is by far the best time to consider a home-based job. There have never been more great working jobs from home out there than right now!
Wanting to leave her dead-end office job but afraid to do it during this lengthy recession, author Monica Limpasas heard that working jobs from home instead were becoming THE hot new career option. She spent some time recently to research and write about the many types of jobs: writer, proofreader, transcriptionist, and others that job-seekers are really getting into these days.
{ 0 comments… add one now }
Leave a Comment