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"Employment" here means salaried employment + self-employment. I didn't give a breakdown on that because it has no effect on the standard rates, but you can find it at Eurostat or OECD.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Jun 1st, 2007 at 04:37:03 PM EST
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As a freelancer, and as someone who occasionally consults for other freelancers about the perils of running a micro start-up, it's worth pointing out that work is reliably patchy, and the concept of full employment is a fairly unconvincing one - at least by the standards that most people use.

So yes - in practice, so-called self-employment is a great sink for many people who are really just temping. It's presented as being terribly entrepreneurial, but the reality is that PLCs are increasibly buying in short-term help when they need it rather than developing extended relationships. At the same time permanent positions are being converted into 'freelance opportunities.'

That latest stats I could find [PDF] suggest that around 3 million are self-employed.

To be fair, insolvency figures are running at about 10-15,000 a year, which suggests that most of that 3 million are doing enough work to stay afloat. Tax breaks also make survival easier. So it's not all bad news.

But I'd guess around half a million to a million are somewhat precariously self-employed, rather than being propelled at full tilt by the glorious headwinds of free enterprise, and should really be counted as part-time rather than full-time workers.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Jun 1st, 2007 at 05:54:31 PM EST
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On "so-called self-employment" I agree and can personally confirm ;). It would be interesting to look into it comparatively - but my impression is that it's fairly general. Corporations have downsized and put skilled people out to fend for themselves as consultants, freelancers, agents, whatever; or they simply don't hire any more for positions that used to be in-house. Anything to put those extra points on the bottom line that our dynamic financial system requires.

The difficult thing in studying this would be to find objective statistical measures that would deal with the real amount of work available and carried out - but we can certainly compare numbers of self-employed. I suspect they're fairly numerous in France, as in the UK, and for the same reasons. The narrative about them is, of course, as you say, dynamic, go-getting entrepreneurs blah. In how many cases it's really a start-up rather than a finish-up it's hard to say.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Jun 2nd, 2007 at 01:53:24 AM EST
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I am working on an initiative - with Norwegian government backing - looking at ways in which "micro-business" may be supported across the "Hanseatic" area(Scotland, Norway initially).

In this "Northern Periphery" - as the EU calls it - microbusiness / self-employment are increasingly the rule, rather than the exception, and the proprietors of these businesses carry a lot of votes.

Our initiative promotes the use of:

(a) "Guarantee Societies" - allowing micro-businesses to club together both to engage in major procurements and to mutually guarantee bilateral credits; and

(b) "Capital Partnerships" - ie revenue/production sharing partnerships between investor and user of investment - which allow quasi Equity "micro-investment" (as opposed to micro credit) to be raised irrespective of the legal form of the microbusiness.

I believe that the big corporations are becoming increasingly "hollowed out" as most of the best people leave.

"Linked/networked small" will be the new "big" IMHO.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Sat Jun 2nd, 2007 at 04:28:33 AM EST
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