In Area Homes, Businesses Are Booming: Thousands Seek a Balance Between Work and Family
It was the recession that drove Nick Davis home. Last year, after having to lay off nine employees, Davis moved his graphic arts business into the basement of his Fairfax County colonial, where he does business on a smaller scale but rather enjoys daily reminders that there's life outside work.</br></br>One recent day that meant answering a question posed by DavisÛªs 9-year-old son, Marco, who absolutely had to know where frogs come from. Dad stopped working and explained.</br></br>For Janice Caldwell, starting a law practice from her Montgomery County home was a way to escape the office politics of the Washington firm she left a year ago. Using a computer and facsimile machine in a spare bedroom, she keeps in touch with clients from as far away as Brazil, and feels more in control of her future.</br></br>Davis and Caldwell are among thousands of Washington area residents who in the last five years have begun operating home-based businesses, in what area officials call a dramatic twist in the region's service-oriented economy. Fueled by layoffs of white-collar workers and by people seeking a better balance between job and family, the work-at-home movement has boomed.</br></br>Loudoun County officials estimate that more than half the 6,600 businesses in the county are home-based. In Fairfax County, the number of people who reported working at home full time in 1990 was 14,201, according to the U.S.' Census, nearly triple the number from a decade earlier. In Montgomery, more than 17,000 people said they worked at home, 10,000 more than in 1980.