Joining the Club
Home-based business owners are in excellent company. Across the United States and Canada, almost 15 million people describe themselves as being self-employed — as, essentially, the owners of their own businesses. And while self-employment figures tend to rise and fall depending on the economy (an economic downturn is often followed by a period of rising self-employment due to layoffs), the bottom line is that working from home is now seen as a viable and acceptable alternative to working for someone else.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 12.2 million Americans are self-employed — which works out to almost 10 percent of the labor force. The percentage is slightly higher in Canada, where the figure is 2.4 million self-employed, or about 14 percent of the labor force. The split between men and women home-based business owners in both countries is the same: two thirds of the self-employed are men; one-third are women.
Aside from economic factors, technology has played one of the biggest roles in boosting self-employment and home-based business figures. Thanks to the ever-improving capabilities of cell phones, e-mail, and the Internet, you can do business with people all over the world from virtually anywhere in the world. Setting up a home-based office has never looked so good.
