Call them telecommuters, remote workers, work-at-home personnel.
However you label them, in Lincoln and Nebraska the number of these flexible workplace employees is increasing.
According to the American Community Survey, regular work-at-home folks in the United States, those not self-employed, have grown by 173% since 2005, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce and nearly 47 times faster than the self-employed population.
The Nebraska Department of Labor does not track those numbers for the state, according to spokeswoman Grace Johnson.
But in Lincoln, three telecommuters — Stacy Carlson, Jim Jones and Cassey Lottman — work remotely for East and West coast companies.
“A lot of the tech companies are finding that they can get quality workers in different parts of the world," Carlson said. "There’s no boundaries anymore, and that’s the really cool thing.”
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Carlson is an affiliate manager for Smile, a San Francisco-based software company that describes itself as closely knit and geographically diverse. Its 26 or so remote employees are in the United States, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada and other locales.
She has a strong background in e-commerce, and has worked for Smile about 18 months, but has been a remote worker about 20 years, including for her own e-commerce business, she said.
Carlson, 48, works from home or office space her company leases for her at Turbine Flats, 21st and Y streets, a collaborative environment for small and startup businesses. In addition, she attends about eight out-of-state conferences a year. And her company has held a marketing and sales retreat in Lincoln once a year for discussion and brainstorming.
Close to 5 million people, 3.4% of the workforce, now work from home at least half the time, according to . New England and Mid-Atlantic region employers are the most likely to offer telecommuting options.
A typical telecommuter is college-educated, 45 years old or older, and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working for a company with more than 100 employees.
They are more productive and make, on average, more money than office workers, according to a FlexJobs survey.
About 75% of employees who work from home earn more than $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of all employees, home or office-based.
Jones, 41, is a software engineer with his own consulting company, Blue Sage Data Systems, who has contracted since June with Juvo Corp. in San Francisco. Juvo uses advanced data science and machine-learning technologies to build financial identities for people in developing countries. Most of Jones' clients are in the Bay Area.
He got a job in San Francisco in 2010. But five years later, as he and his wife were having a second son, they decided to move back to Lincoln. They have four kids now, all under 6, and his wife is a Lincoln Public Schools English teacher.
Jones, Carlson and Lottman said a lot of remote workers are introverts, but even so, they don't necessarily love the isolation remote work can bring.
In the beginning, it felt really liberating to not have someone over your shoulder all the time, Jones said.
“Over the years, it’s kind of become more of a burden in that I have to be way, way more deliberate in making sure I’m socializing with people outside of my family,” he said. “It definitely can weigh you down over time.”
He recently joined Fuse, a Haymarket coworking site, in order to see other faces and different walls some days. Fuse has open office space with good internet service and really good coffee, Jones said.
He goes there two to three times a week but can be at home when he needs it quiet to get specific things done.
Lottman, 25, who has a computer science degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, began her career at a Lincoln startup as an office worker. Then two years ago, she got a remote job with a New York nonprofit, Crisis Text Line, a place she had volunteered before she got the paying gig as a software developer.
In November 2018, she made the switch to her current job with Glitch, also a New York City company. About half of the independent tech company's employees work remotely.
Lottman works out of her house in the Everett neighborhood, one she bought after discovering that her apartment workspace at a plastic folding table just wasn't cutting it.
“That’s not a very effective workspace,” she said.
Now she has a dedicated home office and works a traditional office schedule, but with flexibility. On some days she treks to a coffee shop, toting her ergonomic portable desk, and sits at a table with other remote-worker friends.
She loves living in Lincoln and the proximity to her family. She's able to get involved in shaping her community, to make it an even better place to live, she said. She has made a run at a Lincoln City Council seat and has testified at legislative hearings.
She ran for public office as an advocate for affordable housing and to bridge the gap between renters and homeowners.
Carlson, who has two kids, also prefers the Lincoln life over that of a big California city.
“I get to live comfortably in a town that I enjoy, that I’m from, and not pay the prices of the big cities,” she said.
But you don't have to seek out-of-state jobs to work remotely.
Nebraska also has businesses that hire telecommuters. According to the state Department of Labor, businesses such as ACI Worldwide, an electronic payments processor; Blue Cross Blue Shield; Mutual of Omaha; and West at Home, which provides sales support and customer service; advertise for remote workers.