The Growth in Working From Home

Joel Kotkin reports:

The impact of this technology is already profoundly affecting the workplace. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of Americans working full-time at home increased by 23 percent to more than four million. Over the next decade home-based workers will constitute one of the fastest-growing parts of the labor force. According to the Hudson Institute, telecommuting is growing at about the rate of 15 percent a year, most of it among the self-employed.

The implications of this shift extend well beyond economics. Drawing work closer to the home, or into the home, undermines the very foundation of the traditional bedroom suburb. Most important, the postindustrial village promises to restore the balance between work and family originally shattered by the industrial revolution. “The biggest jolt the industrial revolution administered to the Western family,” suggests historian Peter Stearns, “was the progressive removal of work from the home.”

Public transportation isn't the wave of the future.You can count on that.