Working from Home: The Business Norm for the 21st Century

Working from home is "the stuff". Working from home is "where it's at." This is the dawn of the 21st century, the age of the Internet, and working from home is an option for almost everyone in the Western world now.

My dearest and closest friend once wrote in a forum essay, "Everyone should have Internet jobs". For the most part, she's right. The vast majority of the workforce should be working from home. The telecommuting options made available because of the advent of the Internet could potentially allow every working adult to work from home.

Universities already offer a wide array of online classes that can be taken for credits. Indeed, it has become possible to earn a bachelor's degree and higher degrees from home. Businesses are turning more and more to services like WebEx to allow business meetings to take place across many miles, across states, across continents-and all without the expense and hassle of physical travel.

Individuals turn to Facebook, Directmatches-dot-com, and a wide array of online organizations that allow for or facilitate creative business networking.

I know that not every career is yet ready to be engaged in from home, and some never shall be. But the typical j-o-b can rather easily be adapted to a telecommuting, working from home situation. Businesses can save a great deal of money by allowing telecommuting. They can maintain smaller or fewer offices. They can pay less in utility bills. They can save on travel expenses. They can cut administrative staff. (For those readers who can't abide the idea of "lost jobs", first off you aren't thinking like an economist; and secondly, remember that when jobs are lost to technology, other jobs, typically for higher pay, are created by that same technology. Economists call keeping jobs to a minimum "Saving Labor". Saving labor is a good thing, not a bad thing. It inspires people to train or educate themselves to become more valuable from a market standpoint, it saves businesses money in certain areas so that they can generate more wealth for themselves, their employees, and society, and it drives innovation by motivating entrepreneurs to come up with new ideas.)

The entrepreneurial spirit that made the United States great is kick-started by the Internet and its facilitation of working from home. Telecommuters spend less time traveling and paying for services like daycare, and get to rejuvenate their energies by spending more time with their families and doing things they desire to do-the kind of extra free time that can lead to inspiring ideas for something new. And needless to say, the start-up business opportunities afforded by being able to work from home would likely take 1000 pages or more to describe.

If you have not already done so, you are hereby advised to check out working from home possibilities-a range of possibilities which is nearly endless.