Key Findings on Teleworkers From The Spring 1998 LFS

By 1998, the percentage of the UK workforce categorised as teleworkers had increased to 5%

• There were approximately a quarter of a million teleworker homeworkers in spring 1998 of whom half worked part-time (66 per cent of them women and 29 per cent of the men)

• Teleworker homeworkers were split roughly equally between men and women. The other types of teleworker were predominantly male (80 per cent of home-based and 70 per cent of occasional teleworker were men).

• Whereas female teleworker homeworkers were split evenly between employees and self-employed, men were predominantly self-employed (70 per cent).

• Nine out of ten men and six out of ten women who were home-based teleworkers were working full-time.

• Compared with the other two types of teleworkers home-based teleworkers were distributed far more evenly across the different occupation groups. A quarter of male home-based teleworkers worked in the craft and related occupations group (this group was very small for other teleworker types). Two-thirds of these men were employed in the construction industry, in trades such as plastering, joinery installation and glazing, for whom any teleworking is likely to be only a minor part of their main job.

• Unlike the other teleworking groups, occasional teleworkers were predominantly employees (80 per cent). They were also overwhelmingly full-time workers (90 per cent).

• Nearly nine out of ten occasional teleworkers were classified in the first three occupation groups listed.

note: these ONS figures differ slightly from those used in the IES analysis because of differences in the definition of a teleworker used. IES includes as teleworkers only those people who work from their own homes at least one day per week, in their main job, who are of working age, who use a telephone and a computer to work from home, and who say that they could not work in this way without the use of this technology to see the more detailed IES analysis for this year click here