--- url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-the-security-answer/' title: '10.3% of Finance Employers Name Security as a Limit on Working From Home. In Health Care, It Outranks Managing Staff.' author: name: Samantha Lankford url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/author/sam/' date: '2026-10-08T10:30:00-04:00' modified: '2026-10-08T10:30:00-04:00' type: post summary: 'Census asked employers what limits remote work. Finance named security most, at 10.3%. In every trade, the firms saying it are bigger than average.' categories: - Blog Post image: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/founder-the-security-answer-hero.webp' published: true --- # 10.3% of Finance Employers Name Security as a Limit on Working From Home. In Health Care, It Outranks Managing Staff. ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png)Founder Data Report ![10.3% of Finance Employers Name Security as a Limit on Working From Home. In Health Care, It Outranks Managing Staff.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/founder-the-security-answer-hero.webp) Founder Data Report # 10.3% of Finance Employers Name Security as a Limit on Working From Home. In Health Care, It Outranks Managing Staff. By Michael Dermer • Updated October 8, 2026 You can’t afford to risk your business without a Sidekick at your side. [Book a Call →](https://lp.lonelyentrepreneur.com/meetings/victoria-sherman/sidekick-call) Nationally, employers name security about as often as managing staff when asked what holds remote work back. Split by trade, the two answers part company — and security comes from bigger firms in every trade. Quick Answer When the Census Bureau asked employers what limits working from home, *security (IT or other) concerns* came from **10.3%** of finance and insurance firms — the highest of any precisely measured trade, and 17 times the 0.6% in accommodation and food services. Nationally, security (3.9%) and managing staff at home (4.0%) are named about equally. By trade they split: in finance and in health care, security is clearly the more common answer; in construction, real estate, arts and food service, managing staff is. And in all 19 trades, the firms naming security employ a larger share of workers than their share of firms. The 30-second version - Nationally, 3.9% of answering employer firms name security concerns as a limit on working from home — level with the 4.0% that name managing staff. - By trade, security runs from 10.3% in finance and insurance to 0.6% in accommodation and food services. Professional services (7.5%) and health care (5.3%) come next, and those three separate clearly from one another. - In finance and health care, security clearly outranks managing staff. In construction, real estate, arts and food service, it is the other way round. - In all 19 trades, the firms naming security employ more than their share of workers. Nationally they are 3.9% of firms and employ 15.0% of workers. - Finance is closest to even: 10.3% of firms, 12.4% of employees. In retail, 2.8% of firms employ 25.7%. ## Security is a finance answer first The Annual Business Survey gave employers five answers to the question of what limits working from home, and let them pick more than one. Nationally, 3.9% chose *security (IT or other) concerns*. By trade, finance and insurance gives that answer most often among the trades the survey measures tightly, at 10.3% — about one answering firm in ten. Professional and technical services follows at 7.5%, then health care and social assistance at 5.3%. Finance clearly separates from professional services, and professional services from health care; health care is level with wholesale (4.7%). Management of companies reads 11.0%, but its error of ±3.2 points is too wide to rank. At the bottom, accommodation and food services (0.6%) and arts and recreation (0.8%) are level, with other services at 1.0%. The Data Share of employer firms naming ‘security (IT or other) concerns’ as a limit on working from home, by trade Management of companies11,105 firms answered · ±3.2 pts11.0%Finance and insurance132,608 firms answered10.3%Professional and technicalservices509,661 firms answered7.5%Utilities1,974 firms answered · ±3.3 pts6.7%Health care and socialassistance337,479 firms answered5.3%Wholesale trade145,335 firms answered4.7%Information38,763 firms answered · ±1.3 pts4.4%Manufacturing127,314 firms answered · ±1.8 pts3.9%Mining, oil and gas8,516 firms answered · ±1.7 pts3.2%Transportation andwarehousing92,760 firms answered3.2%Administrative and wasteservices178,316 firms answered3.0%Retail trade271,531 firms answered2.8%Construction376,959 firms answered2.3%Educational services38,189 firms answered2.1%Real estate, rental andleasing178,272 firms answered1.8%Other services187,277 firms answered1.0%Arts, entertainment andrecreation59,519 firms answered0.8%Agriculture and forestry10,496 firms answered · ±0.5 pts0.7%Accommodation and foodservices223,827 firms answered0.6% Bars share one scale. Slate bars (management of companies; utilities; information; manufacturing; mining, oil and gas; agriculture and forestry) carry a standard error of 1.3 points or more, or half the estimate, printed under each, and should be read as approximate. Firms could give more than one answer. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Businesses (AB2300CSCB01), question FACWHOME by 2022 NAICS sector, employer firms, released January 2026. Shares are of firms in each sector that answered the question; nationally that is about 49% of the 5,934,950 employer firms in scope. > Nationally, security and managing staff are named about equally. In finance and health care, security wins. In construction and food service, managing staff does. ## Security against managing staff: the same firms, two answers Because the survey let each firm give several answers, the security share and the managing-staff share come from the same firms, and comparing them needs a stricter test than comparing two trades. Under that test, nationally the two are a tie. By trade, six of the eighteen trades with both answers published come out one way or the other. In finance and insurance, 10.3% name security against 8.6% naming management. In health care and social assistance, 5.3% against 3.4%. Construction, real estate, arts and food service run the other way, with managing staff named more often. In the other 12 trades the two answers cannot be separated. The survey does not ask firms why they chose either answer, and this article does not supply a reason. The Data Security concerns against managing staff at home, share of answering firms, selected trades Finance and insurance Security concerns10.3% Managing employees too costly or complicated8.6% Health care and social assistance Security concerns5.3% Managing employees too costly or complicated3.4% Professional and technical services Security concerns7.5% Managing employees too costly or complicated6.3% Wholesale trade Security concerns4.7% Managing employees too costly or complicated6.2% Construction Security concerns2.3% Managing employees too costly or complicated3.5% Real estate, rental and leasing Security concerns1.8% Managing employees too costly or complicated2.8% Arts, entertainment and recreation Security concerns0.8% Managing employees too costly or complicated1.7% Accommodation and food services Security concerns0.6% Managing employees too costly or complicated1.3% Orange is security, slate is managing staff; the colours name the answer, not which is better. Finance and health care are the only trades where security is clearly higher; construction, real estate, arts and food service are the trades where managing staff is clearly higher. The test used is the conservative one for two answers from the same firms: a gap larger than 1.96 times the sum of the two standard errors. Both bars use one scale. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Businesses (AB2300CSCB01), question FACWHOME by 2022 NAICS sector, employer firms, released January 2026. Shares are of firms in each sector that answered the question; nationally that is about 49% of the 5,934,950 employer firms in scope. ## In every trade, the bigger firms are the ones saying it Count employees instead of firms and the security answer grows in every one of the 19 trades. Nationally, the 3.9% of firms naming security employ 15.0% of the workers at answering firms. In retail, 2.8% of firms employ 25.7% of workers, and those retailers average 358 employees against 38 for every retailer that answered. Finance is the closest to even. Its security answer comes from firms averaging 42 employees, against 35 across the trade. In most other trades, the firms naming security are several times the size of the trade’s average answering firm. The Data How much bigger are the firms naming security? Their employee share divided by their firm share Arts, entertainment andrecreation0.8% of firms · 13.5% ofemployees17.4xAccommodation and foodservices0.6% of firms · 6.5% of employees11.3xRetail trade2.8% of firms · 25.7% ofemployees9.3xEducational services2.1% of firms · 15.9% ofemployees7.6xTransportation andwarehousing3.2% of firms · 21.8% ofemployees6.9xReal estate, rental andleasing1.8% of firms · 10.0% ofemployees5.7xConstruction2.3% of firms · 10.3% ofemployees4.6xAdministrative and wasteservices3.0% of firms · 12.6% ofemployees4.3xOther services1.0% of firms · 4.0% of employees4.1xWholesale trade4.7% of firms · 12.6% ofemployees2.7xHealth care and socialassistance5.3% of firms · 10.9% ofemployees2.0xProfessional and technicalservices7.5% of firms · 15.3% ofemployees2.0xFinance and insurance10.3% of firms · 12.4% ofemployees1.2x 1.0x would mean the firms naming security are the same size, on average, as every answering firm in their trade. All 13 precisely measured trades are above 1.0x; the median is 4.6x. The six trades with wide errors are left off. The ratio is built from published counts and has no published error, so small differences are unranked. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Businesses (AB2300CSCB01), question FACWHOME by 2022 NAICS sector, employer firms, released January 2026. Shares are of firms in each sector that answered the question; nationally that is about 49% of the 5,934,950 employer firms in scope. ## What to do with this if you run a small business If security is what keeps your work in the building, the trade you are in shapes how common that is. In finance it is close to one employer in ten, and it is not just the big firms saying it. In most other trades it is an answer that grows with the payroll. For a small owner, the useful move is to separate the two answers this survey keeps apart: a security concern points at systems and access, while a management concern points at how work gets checked. Knowing which one is actually yours tells you what to fix first. Four limits worth holding. The survey covers **employer firms only**. Only about **49% of employer firms answered** this question, and every share here is of the firms in each trade that answered. The question is **multiple response**, so no answer can be read as ‘everyone else’. And the employee figures count **everyone at a firm** giving the answer, which makes them a reading of firm size, not of how many workers are affected. The Data Where the numbers land 10.3% of answering finance and insurance employers name security as a limit on remote work 3.9% · 4.0% national shares naming security and managing staff — a tie 19 of 19 trades where the firms naming security employ more than their share of workers 15.0% of employees work at the 3.9% of answering firms naming security U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey 2023, Characteristics of Businesses (AB2300CSCB01), question FACWHOME, answer ‘security (IT or other) concerns’. ## Frequently Asked Questions Which industries cite security as a limit on remote work most often? In the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey 2023, finance and insurance had the highest precisely measured share of employer firms naming 'security (IT or other) concerns' as a limit on working from home, at 10.3%. Professional and technical services (7.5%) and health care and social assistance (5.3%) followed. Do employers worry more about security or about managing remote staff? Nationally, about equally: 3.9% name security and 4.0% name managing employees. In finance and health care, security is clearly named more often. In construction, real estate, arts and food service, managing staff is. Is security a big-company concern? In most trades it leans that way. In all 19 trades, the firms naming security employ a larger share of workers than their share of firms. Nationally they are 3.9% of firms and employ 15.0% of workers. Finance is the closest to even, at 10.3% of firms and 12.4% of employees. Which industries name security least? Accommodation and food services (0.6%) and arts, entertainment and recreation (0.8%), which are within the survey's margin of error of each other, followed by other services (1.0%). What does the employee share mean here? It is the share of a trade's employees who work at firms giving the answer — all of those firms' employees. Because it counts whole payrolls, it shows how large the answering firms are compared with the rest of their trade. Keep reading - [8.6% of Finance Employers Name Managing Staff at Home as the Obstacle. In Retail, 3.0% Do — and They Employ 21.4% of the Workers.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-the-big-firm-answer/) - [Only 4.0% of Employers Say Managing People at Home Is the Problem. 60.1% Say the Work Can’t Leave the Building.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-the-work-not-the-worker/) - [In Real Estate, 1.2% of Workplaces Hold 32.7% of the Jobs. In Manufacturing, 16.7% Hold 80.2%.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-who-holds-the-jobs-in-your-trade/) Part of the entrepreneurial struggle: [Trust Gap](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-struggle/trust/) ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png) Published by **The Lonely Entrepreneur** — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. [lonelyentrepreneur.com](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/) This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.