Data from the U.S. Census Bureau released this month shows that more than 11 million people worked at home in 2005, up almost 2 million from 1999. And nearly half of those make $75,000 a year or more.

Wow! I bet that has the work at home swindlers staying up late thinking up new hooks for their work at home scams. With the U.S. Census bureau as a “source” and a figure like 50 percent making $75,000 a year, this is scammer gold.

I can already see the scam ads on my search engine results. “Census Report: Home Workers Earn $6250/mo. Click Here to Start Earning. No Risk!”

And news stories like this one “Millions Working from Home, Half Make $75,000 a Year” from ArkansasMatters.com, a TV station website, only feed the fantasy that the work at home scams are real. The article leads off with this: “There may be some truth in those advertisements claiming you can work from home and make big bucks.”

Uh, no, there really isn’t truth to those advertisements, folks.

The people making $75,000 a year working at home did not find their jobs through some online or email ad. These are people who are making that kind of money in the traditional workplace and are able to transition to working at home full- or, more likely, part-time.

Let’s go a little bit deeper than the headlines. According to the Census Bureau: “In 2005, 46 percent of people who said they worked at home some or all of the time earned at least $75,000 per year, compared with 34 percent of non-home workers who made at least that much.”

The key phrase here is “some or all of the time.” The Census Bureau adds together everyone who works at home, even as little as once a week, to come up with these figures. In fact, the median monthly income of those who exclusively work at home was $1,827.

And that’s not bad, especially since only about half of the home-based workers reported working 35 hours a week or more. But it’s not $75K. So know how to spot a scam and steer clear of promises of big bucks.

Who Are the Millions the Census Bureau Says Are Making $75K a Year at Home? originally appeared on About.com Work-at-Home Moms on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 07:57:18.

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