According to the Canadian Telework Association (CTA, http://www.ivc.ca/),there are around 11 million teleworkers in the USA (8.5% of the working population) and 1 million in Canada (7.l% of the working population). While teleworking in the USA started spreading widely in the late 1980s, the movement in Europe did not really take off until the mid-1990s - with the exception of a handful of pioneers such as FI Group (home-based teleworking) in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s and LA REDOUTE (telecentres) in France at the beginning of the 1970s.
Over the last 4 years, however, teleworking has grown at an exponential rate in Europe.
It should be recalled tyhat the German institute EMPIRICA estimated the the number of European teleworkers in 1994 at not more than 1 million.In 1999, the szame institute put the figure at around 9 million (6% of the labour force). In 2000, the number came close to 10 million [TW, 00], in regard to which it should be added that only home-based teleworking (salaried employees and one-manufacturer businesses) and nomdaic teleworking are taken into account. Teleworkers at telecentres, in telecottages or networked teleworkers are not included in the figure.
This growth, however, is not evenly spread among the countries.
With a fiugure of 17% of its working population, Finalnd heads the list, while at the other end of the scale comes Spain with as little as 2.8%. Germany is situated around the average for Europe with a figure of 6%.
Generally speaking, teleworking is far more developed in the countries of Northern Europe (15% in Spain, 14% in the Netherlands) than in the countries more to the south (3.6% in Italy, 2.9% in France, for example).