virtual assistants

I was looking through the Sunday AJC this morning to try to find something I could blog about and I found an article about virtual assistants.

To put this in context, the paper (on the front page) also reports that the unemployment rate in Georgia has gone over 10%.

The idea behind virtual assistants is that a small or medium-size business had a payroll of employees and the business is now using the Internet to find virtual assistants in order to lay off workers and reduce costs. A virtual assistant is someone who works from their home and does administrative tasks for businesses such as document preparation, paperwork and accounting. Some do bilingual translation or creative services. By using virtual assistants, companies save money on real estate and equipment as well as on benefits as virtual assistants (or VA's) generally do not receive benefits. As expected, there is a great deal of turnover among VA's, so companies can use VA's to supplement their staff, but not replace their entire workforce.

This is not an ideal situation for someone who was recently laid off from full time work as the VA does not receive benefits, including health care. However, it is good for workers who want the flexible of part-time or temporary work. VA's, like all telecommuters, also save money on clothing and commuting costs. VA's are usually contractually employed for a certain period of time and there are many firms looking for VA's to supplement their staff.

There is no agreement about the number of VA's that currently exist. The AJC article (which is actually a reprint from the Washington Post) does not give a number, but a website I found put the number currently between 5,000 and 35,000, which is lower than I expected. I would expect this number to grow in the current job environment.