In 2001 Dan Pink made the case for the “free agent nation”, whereby we would increasingly be self-employed individuals using web-based technologies to make contacts and deliver our services. While that has not entirely been the case, research from Germany’s Institut für Mittelstandsforschung shows a significant growth in the number of hybrid self-employed entrepreneurs since 2001.
The study shows that there were 2.46 million such people in 2001, but by 2016 this had risen to 3.39 million. What’s more, this latter figure was higher than those who were exclusively self-employed for the first time.
“The tendency towards hybrid self-employment has increased among both men and women measured as the respective share of hybrid self-employed entrepreneurs of the workforce in Germany,” the researchers explain. “Nevertheless, the fluctuation among women is higher than among men because women start this form of employment from inactivity more often.”
Frequent switching
Men, however, do appear to move more frequently between dependent employment into hybrid self-employment, which is a phase in which the researchers say that people are in a combination of self-employed and employee roles.
The researchers were able to quantify this form of work by using data from the Taxpayer Panel. This revealed that around 60% of hybrid self-employed entrepreneurs were in employment before making the change, with just 26% moving into it from self-employment alone.
The data suggests that around 700,000 people change to hybrid self-employment per year, with a similar number moving out of it. The vast majority of these people make the switch within the service sector, with areas such as education, arts, and health particularly popular. Another 20% worked in business-related services, such as consulting, with a further 18% in areas such as hospitality and transport.
The researchers suggest that around 8% of the workforce qualify as hybrid self-employed, and with the trend rising in recent years, it is perhaps something that policymakers need to be more aware of.
