The world’s 3.5 billion poorest adults hold assets below US$10,000 states a report released in 2017 by Credit Suisse. In several countries, adults remain poor due to various reasons: illiteracy, limited skills, lack of career opportunities, wars, conflicts and natural disasters, physical handicaps, disease, old age and a plethora of others.
Despite, a large number of this population can rise above the poverty line or ease financial hardships by working from home. Here, work from home does not mean telecommuter jobs. It merely means completing simple tasks from home that can earn some income or augment existing one for a better life.
Bridging Gender Pay Gap
Gender pay gap exists worldwide and is also prevalent in the US and Europe. A joint report by Merril Lynch/ Bank of America and Age Wave holds some valuable insights. Women spend 44 per cent of their life outside the workforce.
When a woman reaches retirement age, she may have earned just over a million US Dollars less than a male. Women are also lesser confident about investing. Working from home enables women to stay longer in the workforce, albeit informally.
It can help bridge the gap in earnings and instil confidence in investing. Work from home enables women to complete simple online tasks by sparing some hours daily to earn a decent income.
Income as Retiree
Despite planning for happy retirement, senior citizens often find themselves saddled with financial problems. This can occur due to sudden illnesses and in some cases, reverse mortgages. Invariably, illnesses force senior citizens to spend on heavily credit card or dig from savings accumulated over years of work.
Failure to pay instalments on reverse mortgages has more serious implications: foreclosure can mean the loss of home and possibly render them destitute. With ample time on hand, senior citizens who work from home for a few hours are easily able to fend way these unfortunate possibilities.
It keeps them gainfully employed- though part-time. Psychological benefits of working from home include a sense of being useful to the society and confidence to counter financial eventualities.
Single Mothers
Unless employed at a very lucrative job, single moms find themselves at a severe disadvantage in meeting household financial needs. Torn between caring for children and finding money for basic requirements, single moms often cut corners. Single moms face difficulties in saving money to provide higher education for kids and creating wealth for the future, including retirement. The problem can be easily solved by taking some work from home jobs, either fulltime or during spare hours.
A 2017 survey by FlexJobs involving 5,500 respondents in the US found 14 per cent stay-at-home moms are working from home. Another FlexJobs survey on working parents reveals 46 per cent of 2,000 respondents prefers part-time jobs- including those at offices or from homes. These figures indicate the importance of work from home jobs for single moms.
Chronic Sickness
Women and men afflicted with chronic sickness can benefit immensely with work from home jobs. They can retain the regular position and work as telecommuter if permitted by the employer.
Alternatively, chronically ill persons can find telecommute jobs or earn a decent income as a freelancer or part-timer by working from home. Such work defrays the high recurring cost of medical treatment while keeping the person gainfully employed.
Working from home jobs often do not require a schedule and hours are generally flexible. It helps chronically ill people to avoid hassles of commuting and exposure to colleagues.
Students
The trend of students working to earn money for financing their education or pocket money is relatively old. The Internet now opens great vistas for students to work from home, not merely for an income but also to acquire or fine-tune skills in their chosen field of study.
Students working from home also learn skills essential for future such as savings and investment. Working from home- or college dorm- helps boost self-confidence, can prevent vices and addictions and makes them self-dependent in several ways.
A search on any reputed part-time job portal reveals that an increasing number of businesses look at hiring students as part-timers for online jobs and projects. Students from economically weaker sections of the society can rise out of poverty by funding higher education by working from home.
Work from Home Pay
Work from home jobs pays fairly well depending upon the nature of work and a worker’s skills. For example, entry-level part-time data entry operators in the USA working from home can earn about US$12 per hour. Social media assistants earn about US$15.
Working from home jobs is available for almost every online task. Professionals working from home on crowd-sourced projects can earn up to US$2,000 or more, depending upon the nature of work. Often, work from home jobs requires bidding. This allows workers to quote a price based upon their skills and volume of work.
Future Scenarios
About 34 per cent of the American workforce or approximately 53 million working women and men were freelancers, a study found. The figure is projected to touch 43 per cent by 2020 as more Americans bid adieu to commute and desk-bound office jobs.
Working freelance from home is also categorized as full-time employment by the United States Department of Labor. Hence, those who work from home are entitled to certain benefits under the country’s labor laws. Additionally, working from home offers various tax benefits.
Fulltime work-from-home employees earn an average US$ 4,000 more every year over their office-bound colleagues. Freelancers earn higher, according to various sources. With these benefits, it appears imminent that more people will take to working from home and rise above poverty.
