08/30/2018
Summary of telecommuting trends:
Regular work-at-home, among the non-self-employed population, has grown by 140% since 2005, nearly 10x faster than the rest of the workforce or the self-employed.
4.3 million employees (3.2% of the workforce) now work from home at least half the time.
From 2015 to 1016:
The employee population as a whole (not including work-at-home) grew by .9% from 2015 to 2016.
The self-employed population grew by 2.4% (not including home-based) and the home-based self-employed population grew by 7.3%.*
Almost all of the growth in self-employment since 2005 is among the home-based incorporated businesses (up 43% from 2005 to 2016)
The telecommuter population grew by 11.7%, the largest year over year growth since 2008.
Forty percent more U.S. employers offered flexible workplace options than they did five years ago. Still, only 7% make it available to most of their employees.
Larger companies are most likely to offer telecommuting options to most of their employees.
New England and Mid-Atlantic region employers are the most likely to offer telecommuting options.
Full-time employees are four times more likely to have work-at-home options than part-time workers.
Non-union workers are twice as likely to have access to telecommuting, but union employee access is growing rapidly.
While there is no Census Bureau or government produced data provides additional granularity on the frequency of telework, Global Workplace Analytics’ research finds that:
50% of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least partial telework and approximately 20-25% of the workforce teleworks at some frequency
80% to 90% of the US workforce says they would like to telework at least part-time. Two to three days a week seems to be the sweet spot that allows for a balance of concentrative work (at home) and collaborative work (at the office).
Fortune 1000 companies around the globe are entirely revamping their space around the fact that employees are already mobile. Studies repeatedly show they are not at their desk 50-60% of the time.
A typical telecommuter is college-educated, 45 years old or older, and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working for a company with more than 100 employees.
75% of employees who work from home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of all employees, home or office-based
The latest telecommuting statistics and trend data