Relevance. The emergence of self-employment in the economic system of Russia undoubtedly has a significant role, as evidenced by the experiment of 2019. This experiment on the introduction of a tax on professional income has acquired special significance, showing a high increase in the number of taxpayers. The expansion of formal employment contributes to the development of entrepreneurship of small and medium-sized business entities, which in general gives impetus to the acceleration of socio-economic development of the regions of Russia. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the fact that everyone should fully know their own capabilities and rights to use resources as a source of profit. Thus, the article analyzes the process of forming the legal status of a self-employed citizen. The purpose of this work is to assess the issue of students acquiring self-employed status. Objectives: based on the analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature, to consider the concept of "selfemployed"; to reveal the advantages and disadvantages, privileges and opportunities of this status for students; to identify the essence and highlight the main distinctive components; to reveal the activities of self-employed students; to analyze the statistical data of the subjects of the Russian Federation. Methodology. In the process of studying the issue of acquiring the status of self-employed, methods of logical, comparative, statistical analysis, classification, generalization, theoretical analysis of scientific and methodological literature, economic and statistical methods were used. The results of the study show that the growth of the self-employed does not decrease the pace. Although the status of self-employed has a large number of positive characteristics for students, however, many young people are not fully informed about the new tax regime. The conclusion based on the results of the study indicates that currently self-employment provides ample opportunities for those who want to try their hand at entrepreneurship. This is a great way to successfully monetize unique abilities, hobbies, invaluable experience and favorite hobbies.