Mostly male and tending to work longer hours than their employee counterparts – known characteristics of self-employed freelancers; perhaps, albeit shown yesterday through a different medium.
Taking to YouTube, the Office of National Statistics uploaded their first ever video on the self-employed labour market – 70% of which is male, with statistics, charts and graphs.
Containing comparisons to the UK’s 25million employees, the almost 3-minute video explores the changes in the number of people working for themselves since 2008, at the onset of the economic downturn.
Without referring to the debate about whether laid-off, redundant employees have inflated the ranks of the self-employed, the office does say that the historic rise in self-employment “happened against a backdrop of a falling numbers of employees.”
More interestingly, while 147,000 people became self-employed
in the 36 months from 2008, the mere 12 months between 2011 and 2012 saw
self-employment rise by 219,000, mainly thanks to men 'going it alone.'
According to the video, London remains the home of self-employed people other than, of course, their own house – which almost six out of 10 self-employed people use in “some form” to carry out their work.
Feb 7, 2013
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