The Insecurity of Freelance Work

Measuring changes in employment is proving difficult

The decline of the conventional job has been much heralded in recent years. It is now nearly axiomatic that people will work for a range of employers in a variety of roles over their lifetimes, with a much more flexible schedule than in the past. Opinion is still divided over whether this change is a cause for concern or a chance for workers to be liberated from the rut of office life.

Is the shift really happening? Some figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), released on June 7th, showed that only 10.1% of American workers were in “alternative employment” last year, a lower proportion than the 10.7% recorded in 2005. In contrast, a study of the British economy by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) shows that the self-employed sector has been growing, with the number of self-employed sole traders rising by 25% between 2007–08 and 2015–16.

These two measures are different. But getting a good statistical fix is not easy when the jobs are hard to define. The ecology of the alternative-employment market has many species. At the top end are independent consultants with six-figure salaries and tax advantages from their self-employed status; at the bottom are cleaners on the minimum wage working for an agency. Some people will be on “zero hours” contracts where they are unsure of their income from week to week. Then there are jobs in the “gig economy” — people connected to work via websites, such as freelancers labelling photos to help artificial-intelligence programs. Plenty of people use the gig economy to top up income, rather than relying on it.

The best placed are skilled professionals and artisans whose work is in demand from a wide range of customers. But many people will be dependent on a single client, which makes them vulnerable to any change in their circumstances. An old friend of Bartleby has a rolling contract to provide tech support to a big firm. The money is good but there is no paid holiday, sick pay or pension, and the contract can be ended with a month’s notice.

The IFS figures show that, although the number of self-employed traders has increased since 2007–08, their aggregate turnover dropped by 19% and their average profits fell by 23% in real terms…

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