Telecommuting: Steady growth in work-at-home culture

Though the numbers vary, it's clear that there has been a growth spurt of telecommuting in the past decade.

On the low end is US Census data that shows telecommuting to be up 35 percent between 1997 and 2010, with 13.4 million of the 143 million Americans in the labor force working at home at least one day a week. But independent employment research firm Telework Research Network's more recent data suggests that 20 million to 30 million Americans work from home at least one day a week, a 73 percent increase between 2005 and 2011. Broken down, those numbers represent 15 million to 20 million road warriors, 10 million to 15 million home-based businesses, 15 million to 20 million people (including the self-employed) working at home part time, and 3 million doing so full time.

Technological advances in software, applications, devices, and engineering continue to aid and abet telecommuting's growth – from iRobot's telepresence robot, which lets physicians make rounds without being in the hospital, to the very real possibility of your boss strolling the halls holographically, thanks to advances from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Object-Based Media Group. Of course, a large portion of the workforce will simply never be able to telecommute – think emergency-room nurses, manufacturing workers, and police officers. In fact, research shows that the small percentage of the overall workforce that telecommutes is typically middle-aged, college-educated, salaried, and in professional roles, earning an average of $58,000 a year. That means telework so far is the domain of middle-to-upper-class professional America.