Self-Employment as a Signal: Career Concerns with Hidden Firm Performance

We analyze a dynamic labor market in which a worker with career concerns chooses each period between (i) self-employment that makes output publicly observable and (ii) employment at a firm that pays a flat wage but keeps individual performance hidden from outside observers. Output is binary and the worker is risk averse. The worker values future opportunities through a reputation for talent; firms may be benchmark (myopic) (ignoring the informational content of an application) or equilibrium (updating beliefs from the very act of applying). Three forces shape equilibrium: an insurance - information trade-off, selection by reputation, and inference from application decisions. We show that (i) an absorbing employment region exists in which low-reputation workers strictly prefer the firm's insurance and optimally cease producing public information; (ii) sufficiently strong reputation triggers self-employment in order to generate public signals and preserve future outside options; and (iii) with equilibrium firms, application choices act as signals that shift hiring thresholds and wages even when in-firm performance remains opaque. Comparative statics deliver sharp, testable predictions for the prevalence of self-employment, the cyclicality of switching, and wage dynamics across markets with different degrees of performance transparency. The framework links classic career-concerns models to contemporary environments in which some tasks generate portable, public histories while firm tasks remain unobserved by the outside market (e.g., open-source contributions, freelancing platforms, or sales roles with standardized public metrics). Our results rationalize recent empirical findings on the value of public performance records and illuminate when opacity inside firms dampens or amplifies reputational incentives.