Ben Cunningham passed along a press release from the census bureau about the self-employed:
The number of businesses with no paid employees grew from 17.6 million in 2002 to more than 18.6 million in 2003, a growth rate of 5.7 percent, according to a report issued...by the U.S. Census Bureau. This represents the biggest rate of increase in self-employment since the Census Bureau began releasing such statistics in 1997; the rate during the 2001 to 2002 period, 3.9 percent, was the previous high.
The usual line I hear at this point is something like this, "OK, but these are just laid off people who got thrown into self-employment." And while this may be true for some, I am seeing more and more people who choose to start a one person business due to lifestyle issues or even because they can actually become better off financially on their own. And even if they are laid off corporate types, hey, they are using free enterprise to move on in life which is not a bad thing.
What are they all doing? There are some interesting findings:
- Some examples of industries with impressive nonemployer business growth are real estate appraisers, 19.1 percent; nail salons, 15.9 percent; landscape architectural services, 14.6 percent; software publishers, 14.4 percent; clothing accessories stores, 12.9 percent; bed and breakfast inns, 8.5 percent; carpet and upholstery cleaning services, 7.5 percent; and confectionery and nut stores, 6.5 percent.- Four economic sectors accounted for almost 60 percent of nonemployer receipts -- real estate and rental and leasing ($176.0 billion, or 21.2 percent); construction ($126.4 billion, or 15.2 percent); professional, scientific and technical services ($102.9 billion, or 12.4 percent) and retail trade ($80.5 billion, or 9.7 percent).
Many of the self-employed I talk with like working alone. Some have had businesses with employees in the past, but the headaches of government regulations made them decide on a different business model.
