Telecommuting has widened its reach
Abridged: OCRegister.com
July 25, 2005

ORANGE COUNTY, CA -- Once the exclusive domain of executives, telecommuting has widened its reach to lower and hourly wage earners. "First it was laptop computers, then along came broadband, which means it's just as easy to work down the road as it is down the hall because you can move a lot of information quickly," said analyst Tom Miller of the Dieringer Research Group, Inc.

"People with lower-end job titles and lower-end wages had a hard time breaking into that - until now," said Tim Houlne, chief executive of Working Solutions Inc., which employs 22,000 home-based contractors. "As telecommuting gained momentum, now you have this lower-wage employee that is able to work from the comfort of their own home." Costs to setup a home office vary depending on the sophistication of the computer equipment, but millions of people in hourly wage categories are setting up shop as independent contractors or home-office employees.

Meanwhile, businesses are cutting office-space expenses and labor costs by farming out this work to contractors or letting their employees telecommute. The market for telework contractors is becoming "very competitive - almost more than the on-site job," said Pamela La Gioia, president of Telework Recruiting Inc. based in Kentucky. "There is nothing you can't do from home."