Costs Working at home is not without its costs. Employers may face problems with supervising staff and ensuring home duties are not affecting work performance, accessing their staff, achieving a team work approach, and ensuring data security and confidentiality 2 . Employees can be disadvantaged by their lack of bargaining power for better pay and conditions. In many industrialised countries, the proportion of people working at home was either stable or in decline over the last decade or so. However, it has again increased because of its wide use in the service sector 1 .
Home workers are most likely to work in the service industries.
The number of home workers grew between 1989 and 1992 in all industries except construction, with the most substantial growth in finance, property and business services. However, in line with ILO findings, it is the service sector where growth has been strongest. It is likely that many of the tradespersons were hairdressers. In 1992 the distributions of the various types of home worker were very similar for men and women. These proportions differed from 1989 when female home workers were more likely than male home workers to have been employees and less likely to have been self-employed or employers.