Self-employment positive for the upturn, PCG says

RA Now

The rise in self-employment is a long-term structural change in the workplace, not a cyclical occurrence based on an unhealthy jobs market, the PCG has stated in response to a TUC report.

Earlier this week the Trades Union Congress reported that self-employment has accounted for 44% of all employment growth since May 2010. Pensioners, part-time workers and so-called “odd-jobbers” are the fastest growing groups within the self-employed workforce, according to the TUC’s analysis.

It said that since 2012, people working for themselves have increased by 232,000, freelancers by 69,000 and sub-contractors by 67,000. But the number of self-employed people who run their own business has actually fallen by 52,000.

The latest jobs figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of people in a job has risen by 691,000 in the three months to February, meaning 30.4 million people are now in work in the UK.

“Self-employment accounts for almost half of all the new jobs created under this new government,” said TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady. “But these newly self-employed workers are not the budding entrepreneurs ministers like to talk about. While some choose to be self-employed, many are forced into it because there is no alternative work. Until we see decent pay rises and better job security, working people will continue to feel that the recovery is passing them by.”

But the PCG said that self-employment actively stimulates economic growth, and its own research shows that daily rates for freelancers have increased since 2011.

 “The way we work is changing and it does not help our economy for backward-looking bodies like the TUC to fight against this change,” CEO Chris Bryce said. “Vulnerable workers need to be protected, but to tar all self-employed people with the same brush will do nothing for those who really need the support of a trade union.”