I work for a larger consulting/third party logistics company who has a wide spectrum on clients. For our service clients, they are the most time sensitive demanding clients who require strict scheduling and staffing. Those are also the lowest profit margin companies, 3-5%. Those jobs are mostly low to medium skilled employees. Trucking, warehousing, clerks. The problem is that these industries requires people to be onsite to do their jobs. And there is a huge excess of labor just waiting to fill these jobs.

Then you look at our technology drivin devisions that produce an unique good for our clients run a profit margin of 18-30%. The high profit margin id doable becuase the labor pool is much smaller. These are also the ones with the most flexibility on schedule.

Some, but not all. Yahoo, for instance, killed all telecommuting. There are also a lot of traditional companies which demand face time and don’t allow telecommuting for anything.

It would be interesting to see the numbers break down by industry, though, as you’re absolutely right that your grocery store cashiers can never, ever, telecommute.

This correlation has nothing to do with causation. Companies that are limited on their flexibility tend to more in the service related industries that tend to have a lower profit margin than companies such as tech.