Abstract
In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the number of own-account workers (the self-employed without employees), including freelancers, in many developed economies. Despite the importance of the group of freelancers for modern economies, little is known about the perceived benefits of freelancing. We use six waves of the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (“Understanding Society”, 2009–2015) to investigate subjective well-being levels of freelancers in terms of satisfaction with life, work, leisure time, income and health. Although freelancing jobs are uncertain and temporary, our cross-sectional (pooled ordinary least squares (OLS)) and longitudinal (fixed-effects) analyses reveal that freelancers are on par regarding life satisfaction with other own-account workers, employers (self-employed workers with employees) and wage workers. The most striking result is that freelancers are significantly more satisfied with their leisure time than other own-account workers, employers and wage workers. Also, freelancers score significantly higher in terms of work satisfaction than wage workers, but do not exceed other own-account workers and employers in terms of work satisfaction. Freelancers are equally satisfied with their health as other own-account workers and employers. In sum, the analysis of several subdomains of life reveals much how different groups of self-employed workers score regarding their overall subjective well-being.
Highlights
Many European economies have experienced substantial increases in own-account workers over the recent decades
The group of own-account workers—which incorporates freelancers—have been shown to be less satisfied with their work than employers or score in terms of work satisfaction as employers, and it is expected that own-account workers are more satisfied with their leisure time than employers
In terms of the financial situation, the own-account workers are expected to score worse than employers, while for life satisfaction—for which mixed empirical evidence exists (Van der Zwan and Hessels, 2019)—and health satisfaction no expectations can be formulated a priori
Summary
Many European economies have experienced substantial increases in own-account workers (self-employed individuals without employees; known as solo selfemployed workers) over the recent decades. The freelance workforce has expanded to about 2 million workers in 2015 in the UK and represents about 40% of the own-account workers and 30% of all self-employed workers (Kitching 2015) In some sectors, such as media, the majority of workers are freelancers (Storey et al 2005). Freelancers work for their own risk while being hired by companies and selling their intangible knowledge. In other words, they are a hybrid between entrepreneurs and wage workers (Van den Born and Van Witteloostuijn 2013). Freelancers differentiate from other own-account workers by their (preference for) temporary work and the knowledge/skill-intensive services they provide (Kitching and Smallbone 2012)
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