Three academic researchers have taken a look at almost 900 households in nine states to find a profile of the typical home based business. The results are very close to an earlier study conducted by International Data Corporation.
The researchers found that the typical Home Based worker is a 44 year old male who is employed in a traditional type of white collar profession such as marketing, sales, or technology. He's got almost a decade of experience in the field.
The IDC study took a look at education as well and found that 27% of the work at homes have a college degree. That's quite a bit higher than the 20% of all U.S. households. In addition, average household income for the Home Based business owners is $57,000 compared with an average of $41,600.
WALLY'S COMMENT ... Home Based business is a term that means quite a bit more today than it did a decade or so ago. I remember about that time being in a meeting with my friend Steve Miller. Steve is a highly successful consultant on trade show strategy. Steve was telling a couple of us about how is young daughter would often sit on his lap while he was taking calls from clients and that the clients really seemed to enjoy that. One of the people present wondered in a shocked tone whether that wasn't dangerous since that would imply that Steve was working from home.
I don't think he would get that reaction today. Today it's common for many of us who "work at home" be quite up front about it. In addition, many of us are now virtual. In my case for example, many routine administrative chores, phone answering, and shipping press kits, demo videos and the like is handled by a firm in California that specializes in that sort of thing.
That's not all. I send tapes to be transcribed to a service that e-mails me back the word processing files. A printer for several of my specialty publications is a couple of thousand miles away and the majority of our communication goes back and forth by e-mail.
Nevertheless, I and many other people are Home Based but not the Home Based of old. Steve's office, and mine, and thousands of others are well and professionally equipped. The simple fact is, that we work in the same building where our home is because it's convenient and it's a way to integrate and balance the different parts of lives. We're more productive. And, I think we're happier.
Look for the trend to this kind of business and business professional to accelerate in the next decade. A decade or so of down sizing, right sizing and generally firing people under euphemistic banners has left a lot of professionals with a very bad taste in their mouth as well as an abiding distrust for big corporations.
At the same time, many of those same corporations have discovered they really needed skills and abilities of the folks that they'd moved out just a few years ago. So they want them back, only now on an outsource basis rather than as employees. The result is more of us with more good opportunities to work from home.
What's next here? I think more and more of us will choose to have the business we want and live where we want. I spoke recently to folks in Bismarck, North Dakota who were discovering that the net and web and all kinds of technologies were allowing them to have a business that was profitable for them and still live in the Northern Plains that they love. In my own case, it means being able to live in Wilmington, North Carolina, a city I love more with each day.
Created: 9/21/99
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