A major white paper by the Telework Research Network —sponsored by Citrix Online andNew Ways of Working®, examines how many American workers actually telework. By focusing on employee telework, rather than just work-at-home statistics, researchers separated employed teleworkers (workers who work at home or other places outside the office) from the self-employed.

While only 2.9 million US employees teleworked on a regular basis in 2009, this new analysis shows that 63 million Americans hold jobs that are telework-compatible and 50 million want to telework, at least part of the time. Based on current trends, regular telecommuters will total 4.9 million by 2016, a 69% increase from the current level.

In a paper summarizing their research, The State of Telework in the U.S., the Telework Research Network estimates that US companies that allow employees to work from home just half of the time can save over $13,000 per half time telecommuter per year—the result of increased productivity, and reduced real estate, absenteeism, and turnover costs.

The nation’s 2.9 million existing telecommuters save 390 million gallons of gas a year, and prevent the release of 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gases, employers save $13,000 per home worker per year and reduce absenteeism by 25%.

Other findings:

• Regular teleworking grew by 61% between 2005 and 2009. The largest percentage growth was among federal (407%) and state workers (88%), but the largest growth in number of new teleworkers was among private sector for-profit and non-profit employees During the same period, home-based self-employment grew by less than 2% (1.7%).

• The biggest barrier to teleworking is management fear and mistrust.

• Seventy-eight percent of workers still travel to work solo in a car, truck or van. Less than three percent (2.3%) of workers report “not traveling” as their primary means of travel to work.

• In a quarter of the nation’s largest 20 metropolitan areas, more people work at home than travel to work via public transportation, walking, taxi/motorcycle/or bike. They are Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington TX, Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale AZ, Detroit-Warren-Livonia MI, San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos CA, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater FL.

• There was no correlation between cities with the worst congestion or longest round-trip commutes and the extent of telework.

“The research is clear. Telework is good for the employer, good for the employee, and good for the environment,” says Kate Lister, Principal Researcher at the Telework Research Network. "Progressive companies that have adopted flexible work strategies are already reaping the rewards in terms of lower costs, higher productivity, and a more engaged and loyal workforce. Those that haven’t, simply will not be able to compete in the global mobile workplace.”

“Our own benchmarking studies show telework, and all kinds of distributed work, are growing rapidly,” says Jim Creighton, thought leader and co-founder of New Ways of Working. “Organizations that want to reap the benefits need to develop programs to ensure that employees who work this way have the support systems they need to work productively and feel connected.”