Midwest Institute for Telecommuting Education, 1999. In 1997, about 3.6 million wage and salary workers, roughly 3.3 percent of all wage and salary workers in the U.S., were paid for work they did at home on their primary job. While this may not be a perfect measure of telecommuting, it is the closest statistic available to measure telecommuting and closely matches the definition of telecommuting. This number represents an increase of almost 90 percent over the same statistic for 1991. People in professional specialty occupations reported the highest rate of telecommuting, followed by executive, administrative and managerial occupations and sales occupations.
Telecommuting can be a powerful recruiting tool, especially in the information technology field.
Telecommute, February 1999. Overall, on any given workday, 8.9 percent of the working population in Minnesota is telecommuting rather than physically traveling to work. Twenty-four percent of the working population telecommute once a month. 1997 Statewide Survey Information Memorandum, Office of Advanced Transportation Systems, March 2, 1998.