The New Nature of Work

An curious aspect of the unemployment data of late is that even though unemployment rates seem to have stabilized, and even dropped a bit this past month, we keep losing jobs.  One of the reasons for the discrepancy is that a large number of people are no longer looking for payroll-based jobs, but becoming consultants and freelancers. 

Even during the boom time a few years ago 20 of the 25 million small businesses in American were actually people who were self-employed — also labeled as small businesses with no employees.

This restructuring from traditional employment to entrepreneurial freelancers and self-employed is accelerating the longer this recession continues.  We soon may be hearing the cry, “We are all small businesses now!”

Andy Tabar sent along a short video from CNNMoney of the boom of self-employed and freelancers and how the market is accommodating them.