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If you’ve been paying attention to the news in the past few weeks, you’ve likely seen the reports about companies turning to telecommuting wherever possible. Meaning that employees are working from home, rather than being physically present in the office. For many U.S. companies this is new — except that it isn’t. The Harvard review reported in 2019 that alternative working arrangements — meaning working arrangements where employees were not necessarily in the office 100% of the time — were growing faster than traditional jobs.

The recent need for social distancing to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus is highlighting this employment trend like never before. Companies in the hardest hit areas in the U.S. have been announcing plans for telecommuting over the past few months. Amazon, which has a large presence in the Seattle area, has been encouraging its employees to work from home where possible.

Other companies have followed suit. Boeing, which recently suspended operations at one of its Puget Sound facilities, was also encouraging all employees whose jobs allowed for telecommuting to work from home. But it’s not just large corporations jumping on the remote work bandwagon.

Twitter is filled with posts from users who are adjusting to their new home offices. Users posting under the hashtags #WorkFromHome and #WorkFromHomeFails are sharing cute photos of their kids and pets “helping” them with their work. Others are sharing comics that cover work-from-home topics — for example, satirical commentary on the reality that many in-person meetings could, in fact, have been emails. I’m sure we’ve all seen that one (and giggled/groaned).

But like I said, telecommuting isn’t new. It’s something gig workers have been doing for years now. Freelancers, independent contractors, consultants and other nontraditional players who make up the gig economy have been working from home, or the coffee shop, or the beach, for years. And we make up 20% to 30% of the U.S. workforce, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. And that figure is from 2016. Remember that this part of the workforce is growing.

A growing gig economy

I’m also a freelancer. And I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. Other freelancers I know of have been doing this for a decade or longer. This isn’t new. We use platforms like UpWork, fiverr, and freelancer.com to connect with companies in search of freelance work. We also build a client base the old-fashioned way — we cultivate networks and follow leads. But the point is, businesses have been using freelancers who work from home for some time now. Otherwise, platforms that connect businesses with freelancers wouldn’t exist.