Work From Home - The New Era Of Entrepreneurship

If you're currently considering working jobs from home instead of from an office cubicle somewhere, you're certainly not alone in your thinking today. Despite the fact that the U.S. economy is still on shaky ground and that national employment numbers don't appear to be improving much, "work from home" opportunities have quite literally exploded in number and have become the hottest employment options today.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released a study indicating that:

- Over 20 million home-based business workers in the U.S. generate more than $430 billion in annual revenue

- 52% of all small businesses are now run out of someone's home.

- Every 11 seconds, someone starts another home-based business here in the U.S.

- 25 percent of home businesses provide 100 percent of their owner's personal income.

- The average telecommuter or home worker is productive for a little more than 7 hours of each 8 hour day, while the average on-site office worker is productive for less than 6 hours.

Why the significant shift away from the traditional office-based jobs to work-from-home jobs? Well, there are several basic factors influencing this major transformation in American business:

Economic pressures on business. As many businesses continue to be challenged economically by today's lengthening recession, business owners are looking for ways to further reduce their companies' expenses in order to help keep them viable. Providing space, furniture, parking, utilities, and the many other fixed costs of having on-site workers adds up quickly, so if they can avoid those expenses while still being able to retain their workforce, they will.

PCs and the internet. Every so often, something comes along to radically re-shape our world. Just as the automobile assembly line of Henry Ford pushed American from being primarily an agricultural economy to being an industrial one, the invention of the personal computer and the internet have thrust us into what is commonly called the "information age". This was a so-called game changer, as it now allows virtually anyone with an internet-connected PC at home to directly conduct business from the comfort of their own home.

The new worker demographic and work ethic. The so-called "baby boomer" generation was this country's last group of workers to follow the typical office-based, single-employer-until-retirement career model. The more recent generation of workers, instead, prizes job mobility and self-empowerment over everything else, and also brings a higher overall comfort level of technology with it. When these kinds of readily available business tools are combined with an entrepreneurial frame of mind, working jobs from home becomes a very realistic possibility for many current and soon-to-be professionals.

Avoiding expenses is like making extra money. Although work-from-home jobs, on average, pay somewhat less than the prevailing local market rates for on-site staff, many of the traditional expenses associated with office jobs such as transportation, parking, wardrobe, dining out, etc. are avoided, meaning that much more money stays in your pocket. And don't forget the significant time savings, too, by avoiding that daily commute!

These and other reasons are why many workers today are not just considering - but actually taking - work-at-home jobs instead of office jobs. There has never been a better time to consider working jobs from home than right now!