They're hardly home alone!
Yorkshire and Humber has almost 180,000 business owners operating from home, according to a survey by Direct Line for Business.
The survey, drawing on data from the Office for National Statistics, said the number of people in Yorkshire and Humber running businesses from their homes stands at 173,933 – representing 7% of the regional workforce.
Across the UK there are now 2.5m home business owners, representing 52% of the total number of UK small businesses and 8% of the UK’s total workforce.
Direct Line for Business said the analysis highlighted an evolving UK workforce “which has developed in a challenging and uncertain economic environment”.
It said: “Millions of people are choosing to take control of their future, achieving a better work-life balance and turning a potential hobby into a career by using an increasingly digital, mobile and flexible business landscape.”
According to a recent Real Business Report, a large majority of home businesses operate across a range of sectors – including e-commerce, travel, marketing, recruitment and legal. The Direct Line for Business survey has also identified an increase in home businesses operating in other key trades such as catering, photography, hairdressing and arts and crafts.
South East and South West have the highest concentration of home business owners, representing 10% of the total workforce in both regions. London’s home business owner community accounts for 9% of the total 4m-strong workforce – with more than 356,000 across the city.
Men are more than twice as likely as women to run their own business from home – with 1.7m male home business owners across the country against 818,000 female home business owners.
Jazz Gakhal, head of Direct Line for Business, said: “Self-employment has been on the rise for several years and our research now shows that a great number of these people work for themselves from home.”
But the survey showed that when asked about how these home business owners prioritised key actions when they first became operational, sorting tax arrangements and organising insurance ranked sixth and eighth respectively – even though three in four home businesses kept all their stock at home, worth £4,388 on average.
Said Jazz: “We urge anyone looking to operate as a business from home to organise home business insurance from the start. The potential emotional and financial loss from an accident or theft could be devastating.”
