Telecommuting Growth Is Slow, Study Says

Despite widespread attention devoted to telecommuting, the number of working Americans doing at least some of their work at home has grown only modestly during the 1990s, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report. The federal study found that 23.3 million Americans handled at least some of their primary or secondary employment from home in 1997, slightly more than 19% of the working population. That was up from 20 million, or just over 18% of Americans, in 1991, the last time a similar study was conducted. The figures include people who work from home under a formal arrangement with their bosses, as well as those who occasionally take work home and those who are self-employed. Tom Nardone, chief of labor force statistics for the bureau, said the overall increase has been slow because many types of jobs, such as factory and restaurant work, cannot be done at home. He noted that the strongest gains were among workers with formal agreements allowing them to work at home, with their total nearly doubling to 3.6 million, or 3.3% of nonfarm workers.