IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/indrel/v49y2018i2p109-127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating the prevalence and distribution of dependent self†employment: some lessons from the European Working Conditions Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Colin C. Williams
  • Ioana Alexandra Horodnic

Abstract

This article advances understanding of the prevalence and distribution of dependent self†employment. Analysing the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey of 35,765 employees in 28 European countries, the dependent self†employed are found to comprise 4.3% (1 in 23) of the EU workforce, 47% of all those reporting themselves as self†employed without employees and 31% of all self†employed. The prevalence of dependent self†employment, however, is found to have decreased since the previous 2010 survey, is not found to be concentrated among marginalised population groups and is significantly more likely in agriculture, forestry and fishing, arts, entertainment, recreation and other service activities, and the household services sector. The implications for theorising and tackling dependent self†employment are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin C. Williams & Ioana Alexandra Horodnic, 2018. "Evaluating the prevalence and distribution of dependent self†employment: some lessons from the European Working Conditions Survey," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 109-127, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:indrel:v:49:y:2018:i:2:p:109-127
    DOI: 10.1111/irj.12206
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12206
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/irj.12206?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Werner Eichhorst & Michela Braga & Ulrike Famira-Mühlberger & Maarten Gerard & Thomas Horvath & Martin Kahanec & Marta Kahancová & Michael J. Kendzia & Monika Martišková & Paola Monti & Jakob Louis Pe, 2013. "Social Protection Rights of Economically Dependent Self-Employed Workers," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 46989, March.
    2. Katie Cruz & Kate Hardy & Teela Sanders, 2017. "False Self-Employment, Autonomy and Regulating for Decent Work: Improving Working Conditions in the UK Stripping Industry," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 55(2), pages 274-294, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Colin C. Williams, 2023. "A Modern Guide to the Informal Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 18668.
    2. Rolf, Steven & O'Reilly, Jacqueline & Meryon, Marc, 2022. "Towards privatized social and employment protections in the platform economy? Evidence from the UK courier sector," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(5).
    3. Hyojin Seo, 2021. "‘Dual’ labour market? Patterns of segmentation in European labour markets and the varieties of precariousness," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 27(4), pages 485-503, November.
    4. Dvouletý, Ondřej, 2020. "Classifying self-employed persons using segmentation criteria available in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    5. Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Ranieri, Antonio, 2022. "Hybrid (Solo)Self-Employment and Upskilling: Is Online Platform Work a Path Towards Entrepreneurship?," IZA Discussion Papers 15344, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Virginia Navajas-Romero & Rosalía Díaz-Carrión & Antonio Ariza-Montes, 2019. "Decent Work as Determinant of Work Engagement on Dependent Self-Employed," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-17, April.
    7. Rossella Bozzon & Annalisa Murgia, 2022. "Independent or Dependent? European Labour Statistics and Their (In)ability to Identify Forms of Dependency in Self-employment," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 199-226, February.
    8. Pilar García Perea & Concepción Román, 2019. "Characterisation of self-employment in Spain from a European perspective," Economic Bulletin, Banco de España, issue JUN.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Piotr Arak & Piotr Lewandowski & Piotr Zakowiecki, 2014. "Dual labour market in Poland – proposals for overcoming the deadlock," IBS Policy Papers 1/2014, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    2. Francesco Bogliacino & Valeria Cirillo & Cristiano Codagnone & Marta Fana & Francisco Lupanez-Villanueva & Giuseppe A Veltri, 2019. "Shaping individual preferences for social protection: the case of platform workers," LEM Papers Series 2019/21, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    3. Eichhorst, Werner & Marx, Paul & Rinne, Ulf, 2020. "Maneuvering through the Crisis: Labor Market and Social Policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IZA Policy Papers 164, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Gianluca Misuraca & Luigi Geppert & Cristiano Codagnone, 2017. "i-FRAME – Assessing impacts of social policy innovation in the EU: Proposed methodological framework to evaluate socio-economic returns on investment of social policy innovations," JRC Research Reports JRC108078, Joint Research Centre.
    5. Debra Howcroft & Birgitta Bergvall-KÃ¥reborn, 2019. "A Typology of Crowdwork Platforms," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 33(1), pages 21-38, February.
    6. Virginia Navajas-Romero & Rosalía Díaz-Carrión & Antonio Ariza-Montes, 2019. "Decent Work as Determinant of Work Engagement on Dependent Self-Employed," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-17, April.
    7. Raquel Carrasco & Virginia Hernanz, 2022. "Dependent self-employment across Europe: involuntariness, country’s wealth and labour market institutions," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(14), pages 1568-1583, March.
    8. Pilar García Perea & Concepción Román, 2019. "Characterisation of self-employment in Spain from a European perspective," Economic Bulletin, Banco de España, issue JUN.
    9. Gillian Abel & Melissa Ludeke, 2020. "Brothels as Sites of Third-Party Exploitation? Decriminalisation and Sex Workers’ Employment Rights," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-15, December.
    10. Colin C. Williams, 2023. "A Modern Guide to the Informal Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 18668.
    11. Andrew Burke & Serhiy Lyalkov & Ana Millán & José María Millán & André Stel, 2021. "How do country R&D change the allocation of self-employment across different types?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 695-721, February.
    12. Valerio De Stefano & Antonio Aloisi, 2018. "European legal framework for "digital labour platforms"," JRC Research Reports JRC112243, Joint Research Centre.
    13. Lilith Brouwers & Tess Herrmann, 2020. "“We Have Advised Sex Workers to Simply Choose Other Options”—The Response of Adult Service Websites to COVID-19," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-15, October.
    14. Marta Kahancová & Monika Martišková, 2015. "Bargaining for Social Rights at the Sectoral Level: The Case of Slovakia," Research Reports 9, Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI).
    15. Ana Millán & José María Millán & Leonel Caçador-Rodrigues, 2020. "Disclosing ‘masked employees’ in Europe: job control, job demands and job outcomes of ‘dependent self-employed workers’," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 461-474, August.
    16. Matthew Cole & Mark Stuart & Kate Hardy & David Spencer, 2024. "Wage Theft and the Struggle over the Working Day in Hospitality Work: A Typology of Unpaid Labour Time," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 38(1), pages 103-121, February.
    17. Yizhi Han & Jingyi Wang, 2022. "Autonomy or Working Conditions?—Research on Heterogeneity and Influencing Mechanism of Self-Employment on Job Satisfaction in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-22, December.
    18. Werner Eichhorst & Paul Marx & Ulf Rinne, 2020. "Manoeuvring Through the Crisis: Labour Market and Social Policies During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 55(6), pages 375-380, November.
    19. Cristiano Codagnone & Fabienne Abadie & Federico Biagi, 2016. "The Future of Work in the ‘Sharing Economy’. Market Efficiency and Equitable Opportunities or Unfair Precarisation?," JRC Research Reports JRC101280, Joint Research Centre.
    20. Sophie Hales & Paul Galbally, 2023. "Messing up research: A dialogical account of gender, reflexivity, and governance in auto‐ethnography," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 1491-1512, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:indrel:v:49:y:2018:i:2:p:109-127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0019-8692 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.