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Essentially it shows that underlying the rapid recent growth of homeworking are two trends:

• the persistence of traditional forms of (often) exploitative manual work carried out primarily in the home
• the emergence of other forms of non-manual work, generally well-paid, making considerable use of ICT and only partially carried out at home. 

A Statistical Portrait of Working at Home in the UK: Evidence from the Labour Force Survey analyses national data to examine the truth or otherwise of some of the claims and myths around home-located work. This kind of analysis has been made possible to a large extent by the introduction in 1997 to the LFS of questions about the location of work and some rudimentary questions about use of ICT.

The key areas examined include:

• How many people work at home?
• To what extent are the new information and communication technologies central to home-located workers?
• Do people who work at home get paid less?
• What sort of people are working from home?

As might be expected, the picture that emerges is complex and varied. 

The numbers game

Over 25% of the UK workforce "sometimes" work at home. But the number of people working "mainly" at home is 2.5% of the workforce 681,000 - though that is almost a doubling of the number who did so in 1981 (346,000).

The LFS now also identifies people who work "partially" from home - i.e. more than one day per week, and people working "sometimes" from whom. The "partially" category accounts for 3.5% of the workforce, 932,000 people.

Unfortunately these kind of questions were not asked before 1997, so it is not possible to use these figures to  confirm or refute the widely held view that there is a growing trend towards home-located work. But in due course it should be possible to tell.

Who does it?

Traditional wisdom has it that women work more at home than men. This is related to the gender agenda in a number of ways, and is often associated in the literature with issues such as childcare and low pay. 

When it comes to working "mainly" at home more women do so than men - 69% to 31%. But the picture is more complex. The opposite is true for people who work at home only part of the time, as the table below shows:

The report also effectively kicks into touch the stereotypical view that "working at home is predominantly undertaken by mothers with young children, the under-qualified, and members of ethnic minorities".

This may be true for traditional forms of homeworking, as other studies undertaken by bodies such as the TUC and ILO have indicated. However, it may be that this is not the case for newer forms of more flexible, home-based work which, it may turn out, is dominated by well qualified professional white males.

We can't say this with a high degree of certainty as yet, as unfortunately the LFS despite the question on use of ICT does not make a clear-cut distinction between job types.

But testing this hypothesis and finding out why this might be so would be a fruitful area for further investigation.

Smarter people work at home?

Home located workers are on average better qualified than the employed workforce as a whole.

In the case of the "mainly" category the difference is slight. But in the case of people working partially from home the difference is marked - 41% have degrees as opposed 16% in the workforce as a whole. Only 24% of this group have either no or only secondary level qualifications. In the mainly working from home group this accounts for 52% 

Information Age

Non-manual work accounts for about 80% of the work done at home, and the majority of this involves the use of ICT:

• 61.2% of those working at home at least one day per week use a telephone and computer to do so
• 49.5% of those who work mainly at home use a computer to do so

Here again the higher incidence of manual work amongst those working mainly from home is evident in the results.

In terms of numbers, this would work out at 907,000 full-time and part-time work-at-home "teleworkers" in Spring 1998 (about 3.5% of the workforce)

Self-employment

As you might expect, there are many more self-employed people who work mainly at home than who work part-time at home. 

62% of those who work mainly at home class themselves as self-employed, compared to 32% of those working partially at home and 24% of those working sometimes at home.

Better pay

The findings on pay generally correspond with the trends outlined above: the picture is very different for manual and non-manual workers.

For non-manual jobs pay is on average lower for homeworkers - drastically so for male manual homeworkers. But for non-manual workers, pay is significantly better than that of their office-based colleagues. 

Overall, average pay for homeworkers is well above the national average:

But these findings do not negate the well-documented incidence of low pay amongst traditional manual home-based workers. These types of jobs are often very low paid.

However, it appears to be the case that the persistence of the old "sweatshop" image of homeworking has masked the rise of another form of home working, one that that can be altogether a more positive and lucrative work option - and one which is the experience of the majority of homeworkers.

The need for a better understanding

The study goes some way to answering some of the key questions about working from home. But it also raises others. 

The key area where greater clarity needs to be introduced in future survey work is on the type of work undertaken. The value of the survey is compromised by the continued lumping together of traditional forms of home working and the new forms of flexible home-based work using ICT. By separating them researchers should be able to identify more accurately the characteristics of different work styles, and such findings would certainly help in clarifying policy issues - e.g. for low pay, or housing standards etc.

It will also be valuable to see trends developing amongst the newer forms of work, and for that the LFS needs to ask the right questions. Questions about ICT use were introduced in 1997, but are only asked of the "mainly" and "partially" home working groups - not the "sometimes" group. Extent of ICT use and work tasks for which they are needed are not identified.

Questions also need to be asked of mobile workers - now some 7% of the workforce - about the extent to which they work at or out of home rather than an office base.

Finally, it is worth noting that the figures analysed are from 2 years ago, when corporate teleworking schemes in the UK were seen as being on the eccentric fringe of business organisation, when employers scoffed at the Internet and thought bandwidth must have something to do with Glen Miller.

Times have changed: remote working and service delivery are now key concepts in business development. We look forward to seeing the impact of this on the flexible workforce.

A Statistical Portrait of Working at Home in the UK: Evidence from the Labour Force Survey, ESRC Future of Work Working Paper no. 4, by Alan Felstead, Nick Jewson, Annie Phizacklea & Sally Walters.

Contact: Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester, 7-9 Salisbury Road, Leicester LE1 7QR, UK

Tel: +44 (0)116 252 5946
Fax: +44 (0)116 252 5953
email: Alan.Felstead@le.ac.uk

website: www.clms.le.ac.uk/WWW/home_working/home_working.html