Employers faced with flexible working requests to allow home-working or indirect discrimination claims following a refusal to allow flexible working, where justification is being challenged, may find the latest Office for National Statistics report, Characteristics of Home Workers 2014, of interest. The findings include:

Of the 30.2 million people in work in January to March 2014, 4.2 million were home workers, giving a home worker rate of 13.9% of those in work, the highest rate since comparable records began in 1998.

Home workers tend to work in higher skilled roles than the rest of the population and consequently earn on average a higher hourly wage, with the most common roles being ‘sales account and business development managers’ (see pages 5 to 8 of the report for the full analysis).

Almost two-thirds of home workers were self-employed in 2014.

Working from home is more prevalent among individuals who are older, i.e. 38.3% for those aged 65 and older compared to 5.1% for those aged between 16 and 24 (see page 11 for the full breakdown).

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