What Are Home-Based Businesses Accomplishing?

• In 2000, 4.18 million people worked from home, up from 3.41 million in 1990. That’s a 22.8 percent increase.

• Home-based businesses represent 53 percent of all small businesses and provide 10 percent of the total receipts of the economy.

• Home-based businesses are a $427 billion a year industry.

• The average income for an income-generating home office household is $63,000 a year.

• There are between 34.3 million and 36.6 million home office households in the U.S.

• The average home-based sole proprietor earned $22,569 in net income while their non-home-based counterparts earned $38,243. Due to lower expenses, particularly in rent and labor costs, the average home-based sole proprietor consistently gained a higher return on gross revenues at 36 percent, versus 21 percent for the non-home-based.

• Over the past decade, small business net job creation fluctuated between 60 and 80 percent.

• Small firms made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced 28.6 percent of the known export value in the Fiscal Year of 2004.

• Sixty percent of home-based businesses are in the service industry; 16 percent are in construction; 14 percent are in retail trade.