Hard figures are difficult to come by because telecommuting has usually not been specifically tracked by job category. This list is my best estimate of the types of jobs most often linked with telecommuting.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.3 million IT workers will be needed from 1994 until 2005. Because there's a shortage of programmers and other information technology workers, they can often call the shots in terms of working conditions. More and more applicants for technical jobs are demanding telecommuting as a necessity.

Approximately 450,000 U.S. judges and lawyers telecommute, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Study, released in May 1997. According to lawyer Nicole Goluboff, author of Telecommuting for Lawyers, telecommuting enables lawyers to “practice faster, better and more” and may enable a law firm to expand its client base.

The editors at Call Center Magazine project a 25% - 40% increase in the agent population teleworking by the year 2002. Approximately 4.7 million people work in call centers today, and that number is expected to double by end of 2005.

Since the days of Willie Loman, salespeople have worked out of their cars, hotel rooms and home offices. Today, there are about 1.5 million sales reps. Many companies are turning their entire sales forces loose to work in “virtual offices.”

This is a very large group -- 875,000 were counted in 1996. Field auditors now work almost completely offsite. Accountants will follow.

This is a very large group also. According to 1996 statistics, there were 690,000 in finance 207,000 in personnel, 178,000 in purchasing, 430,000 in marketing, and 341,000 in administrative services. Since most management jobs are knowledge-based, they all are telecommutable.

Writers have always worked out of their homes, but now their ranks have been joined by technical writers, public relations specialists and publicists, and even reporters and correspondents, for a total of more than 300,000 jobs. Estimates vary, but I expect that at least telecommuters hold 25% of these positions.

New media jobs are snowballing. I've seen figures that show 250,000 new media jobs in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles alone. Among the opportunities for telecommuters are jobs such as archivist, content producer, news condenser, HTML/Java coder, online editor and webmaster.

With the advent of computer graphic tools, an estimated 320,000 graphic artists and designers have the potential to work at home. Many already do.

There's an estimated 55,000 people staffing software help desks. This number is expected to increase by 30% by the year 2000. Because the need for help spans several time zones, telecommuting is a natural way to handle call overflow and 7 x 24 support.