According to a recently released report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), 40% of the U.S. workforce is contingent, up from 30% in 2005.
The GAO's definition of contingent covers the broad category of workers who aren't full-time, permanent employees. The GAO includes the following in their definition:
- Agency temps: (1.3%)
- On-call workers (people called to work when needed (3.5%))
- Contract company workers (3.0%)
- Independent contractors who provide a product or service and find their own customers (12.9%)
- Self-employed workers such as shop and restaurant owners, etc. (3.3%)
- Standard part-time workers (16.2%)
Most interesting from our perspective is this suggests that 19.2% of the workforce is self-employed. I get to this number by adding contract company workers, independent contractors and self-employed from the above list.
This is quite a bit higher than the roughly 10% of the workforce the BLS reports. It also helps answer the question asked in the HBR article Where are all the Self-Employed Workers?.
The answer to question of where they are is they are here, but they been classified as traditional employees by the BLS.
The GAO report has been getting a lot of press and the articles below cover the report findings in more detail:
Forbes - Shocker: 40% of Workers Now Have Contingent Jobs, Says U.S. Government
WSJ - New Data Spotlights Changes in the U.S. Workforce
Lexology - New GAO Report Shows 85% of Independent Contractors are Content With Their Employment Type
As regular readers know, we been saying for years self-employment and contingent work are much more common than the official statistics say. It's nice that the GAO agrees.
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