Exploring the rise of self-employment in the modern economy is a new report on self-employment in the UK.
It comes from IPSE (the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed), who worked with Kingston University on this project. The study is based on data from the UK's Office for National Statistics.
The study provide a good overview of the growing self-employed sector of the UK economy.
It also focuses on what they refer to as "highly skilled freelancers". These are the self-employed working in managerial, professional and technical occupations.
Key quote from their summary:
Today, more people than ever before are choosing solo self-employment for reasons such as the freedom and flexibility it provides. As a result, self-employment has grown enormously in the last decade, and the trend shows no signs of slowing.
Much of the recent growth has been driven by the expansion of the highly skilled freelance sector. This group has grown by 46 per cent since 2008, and now accounts for almost half (46%) of all solo self-employed.
This is similar to the U.S findings of the MBO Partners Client of Choice study series (we work with MBO Partners on this study).
As the chart below shows, the number of U.S. independent workers providing services to businesses, which is a similar group to IPSE's skilled freelancers, have also been growing rapidly.
That the growth of this segment is similar across the two countries is no surprise. Both are facing the same trends and shifts.
We're currently working on the 2018 update to this study series. We will report our new finding in a few months.
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