HOME OFFICE : Pioneers Continue to Explore Territory Beyond Offices, Factories

This year, would you be interested in a job in one of the fastest growing segments of the American economy? A job in which workers say they feel more relaxed, have a healthier diet, take more time off, get more exercise and even enjoy a better sex life?

Consider working at home, as are a growing number of Orange County residents, and you could enjoy these Top 5 work-at-home benefits reported by Home Office Computing magazine’s 1992 poll of 4,100 readers.

Nationally, people with offices in their homes are considered a social phenomenon, pioneers moving jobs out of factories and offices, back into the home, where most jobs were 150 years ago.

Home businesses are also one of the most rapidly growing segments of the U.S. economy, with a 15% increase predicted for 1992. Despite a recession, the number of home businesses has increased as people cut overhead by moving their offices into their homes or starting new businesses to help make ends meet.

Home office people are a group still poorly defined and lacking even a common label to identify who they are and what they do. Paul and Sarah Edwards, authors of “Working From Home: Everything You Need to Know About Living & Working Under the Same Roof” (J.P. Tarcher, $14.95), call their readers “open-collar-workers.”

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Marilyn Burns, Ph.D., of Oklahoma State University’s Cooperative Extension Service, refers to them as “home-based business workers.” Bernie Ward, in a SKY Magazine article, coined the term “hofficers” to stand for anyone who lives and works under the same roof. And some Orange County city governments refer to people with licensed businesses in their homes as “home occupation proprietors.”

If you have an office in your home, you fall into one of five broad categories. The largest group is those who bring work home from their conventional office job. The other four groups are people with a full-time, home-based business; those with a part-time, home-based business; salaried people working at home by telecommuting, and all others such as investors, hobbyists and household managers.

In California, there are 1.7 million home offices, according to Pacific Bell’s market research. The typical California home office worker is age 35 to 50, has a household income of $50,000, has three to five people in the household and is employed full time. Males outnumbered females by 12%, and all have several pieces of high-tech office equipment ranging from personal computers and faxes to office copiers and modems.

A survey of Orange County cities revealed that approximately 25% of all business licenses in Orange County are for businesses in the home.

Although it has no exact numbers, Pacific Bell says the amount of business services being performed at residences increased significantly in 1992. It reacted to the growth in home offices by establishing a Home Office Information Line to meet the needs of people working from home.

At the Laguna Hills Target Store, manager Frank McCrudden credits the sales success of the store’s home office department on what he says is the county’s exceptional number of home offices and a high percentage of entrepreneurs.

Given California’s history of lifestyle innovation and Orange County’s highly entrepreneurial climate (even in recession), odds are that the home office revolution is well established and thriving all around us.

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To find out more about Orange County home office workers, I’d like to poll the readers of The Times Orange County about their home offices and home-based businesses. If you will mail, telephone or fax your name and address to the following address or phone numbers, I will send you a short, simple questionnaire:

Send your name and address to:

Bob Duke

Home Office Survey

PO Box 3082

Newport Beach, Calif. 92659.

Telephone: (714) 640-5858

Fax: (714) 721-5717

The deadline for requesting a questionnaire is Feb. 6.

And please, Orange County residents only. The results of the poll will appear in future editions of Home Office.