A brief history of self-employment.
Apologies to any real historians.
I grew up with a self-employed father, who worked in journalism.
At the time, many of his colleagues were freelance too - which allowed him to work for a main hirer - the BBC, as well other organisations. I seem to remember talk about it being fairly precarious, contracts would regularly come up for renewal, and there was no guarantee it would be renewed, and my memories were he would be endlessly exploring new projects, new opportunities.
As a child, for me, this was how people worked. I knew the difference between employment and freelancing, but didn't really understand that freelancers were in a minority, nor did I recognise the challenges my dad was probably facing.
He wasn't always self-employed. His early career was in design, and he broke into hospital radio, finding a love for broadcasting. This turned into working for local commercial stations, and then eventually public radio, both local and national. He was self-employed, because that was the dominant model at the time in that industry.
Even today, you'll see plenty of recent court cases about prominent broadcasters and journalists having their employment status questioned by HMRC, and no shortage of articles about the dire state of freelance journalism.
Film & TV is another industry which has been primarily self-employed for many decades, with production companies bringing together crews to shoot and edit, and of course talent being on a contract too.
In fact, if we look back deep into history, self-employment was the OG form of work.
For centuries, tenant farmers or smallholders would work the land, farm it, and trade or sell produce (although often in order to pay rent to landlords and landowners).
Later in pre-industrial settlements, blacksmiths, farriers, market traders, a long list of trades where individuals would be effectively running their own small businesses.
Whilst the Late 18th century marked a significant shift from agrarian self-employment to factory based work, self-employed persisted around in sectors like farming, small-scale manufacturing and retail.
Census data shows that around 2 million people were self-employed - around 15% of the economically active. In fact, the 19th century was often called the ‘age of entrepreneurship’ - as it had the highest number of self-employed people as a proportion of the economically active from 1851 right until the 2020s.
But few self-employed individuals in those days were looking to become the next Arkwright, Wedgwood or Cadbury.
Whilst there are very few records from that period around the reasons, most were motivated by necessity. The need to eat and afford shelter. Running your own business wasn't a radical act, but an evolution of what had been happening for centuries - self-sufficiency.
Self-employment was also common in migrant communities, whether it be from those arriving from the British Colonies, or escaping regimes from across the continent.
And even the side-hustle was present, with census data again showing that around 10 percent of the self-employed had multiple businesses in the 19th century.
Interestingly, huge numbers of women were found in self-employment, often receiving far higher incomes through working for themselves, than employed roles at the time.
In the Late 19th and early 20th century, we saw a rise of freelance journalism, with writers contributing to multiple publications without long-term contracts, and as the film and television industries developed, many roles, especially in production and technical areas, were filled by both independent contractors, but also many small 'cottage industry' businesses, as independent production houses.
Entrepreneurship rates stayed high in the 19th century until 1901, after which they started to decline rapidly.
In 1851, roughly 15% of the working population was self-employed.
By 1971, that proportion had dropped to around 7%.
By 2011, it had climbed again to nearly 11%.
And by 2020, just prior to COVID, we saw figures of around 5m self-employed individuals in the UK - approximately 15.6% of the population, only just reaching Victorian levels once more.
This recent growth was primarily accelerated by advances in digital technology, enabling hirers to access freelance and on-demand workers with minimal effort, and the explosion in the so called 'gig economy' (which again, not a new thing, and we'll discuss in a future chapter whether this 'frictionless' talent market is a good thing, or not).
Today, in 2025, after a dip to 13% from 2020 numbers, we see again around 4.3 in self-employment. COVID obviously changed work for many people - and the need for stability during economically turbulent times, along with remote work being more readily available, (plus a few tax law changes) meant self-employment wasn't as attractive for a while, but we are seeing numbers return back to pre-2020 levels in the UK.
So to suggest that self-employment is the new trendy thing is to ignore a significant period of labour history.
In the 21st Century, of course, self-employment for many is far much more of a choice rather than necessity, but many still find themselves in enforced self-employment, rather than actively deciding to start their own business - just as 100 years ago.
67% of those in our study chose to work in self-employment - which means around 1/3rd didn't actively choose this way of working.
Enforced self-employment comes from a range of reasons - unable to find permanent work, unable to find work which supports how the person needs to work (perhaps around being a carer, a parent, in a specific location, or work suitable for those with conditions that require accommodations).
Some too are not willing to accept poor employment either - increasing numbers of individuals feel many roles don't align with their needs but also their values.
We saw a massive mindset shift, often attributed to millennials - which prioritised work-life balance, which prioritised values-driven work, and in an economically prosperous market with low unemployment, workers could afford to be more choosy.
But even the idea of work needing to be more meaningful is not a new one. William Morris, renowned artist, writer, craftsman, and socialist, wrote a lecture in 1884, "Useful Work versus Useless Toil" as a critique on the nature of labour in a capitalist society, distinguishing between 'useful work', which brings things people need or value and 'useless toil' which exists only to sustain the system or the profits of business. It called for transformation of work, a freedom from meaningless toil, and a right to contribute meaningfully.
The millennial take on work was, in my view, what many of us in self-employment already knew - that autonomy, respect, meaningful work and balancing work and not-work, is essential for wellbeing.
Indeed, numerous studies of wellbeing and productivity at work show how important those aspects at work are, along with clarity and purpose of work, trust and accountability, healthy communication, opportunities to grow, and a sense of belonging (we'll talk about these in an upcoming edition too).
COVID again threw a cat amongst the pigeons - suddenly the world realised that you didn't have to be in an office to get work done. Remote worked (or it seemed to, at least), and people were enjoying not having to commute.
In 2024, our research showed the top reasons for entering self-employment (where by choice):
77.1% a desire for more flexibility
61.7% a desire for more control
34.2% a desire for improved mental health
33.3% a desire for more income
So a clear story around control, autonomy and looking for an improved experience of work, and meaningful work at that. All of those millennial (or Morrisian) ideals are still very much present, and perhaps will be even more important in the age of AI.
There's already a narrative that AI will remove meaningless work that humans do - leave it to the bots, a techno-optimist view that we'll be left with only the best jobs. Whilst at the same time, early takes from businesses like Microsoft, who are of course heavily invested in the space, suggest many roles will be 'overseeing' the work of AI. Back to factory managers, watching people on the line?
There will, undoubtedly, in the coming years be a huge number of job losses driven by AI. Not just declines in the numbers of people in specific jobs, but jobs literally no longer existing. Just as we saw 150 years ago, when industrialisation removed many roles - and created new ones.
There will, absolutely, be more and more people entering self-employment, as employers seek to reduce headcounts, under the promise of AI delivering work in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the people. And more and more individuals will turn to self-employment, not through choice, but as a way to cover their income - perhaps the idea that freelancing is a path to riches or work is abundant.
Perhaps many will turn to self-employment looking for, counter-intuitively, some sort of stability - as perm employment becomes even more precarious, and employers look to reduce their full-time teams, and only bring in specialists when required - after all, lose a source of income when you're employed, and it's 100% of your pay; lose a source of income when you're freelancing, and it's hopefully only a small percentage.
Perhaps the precarious nature of work will come to all of us, employees and the self-employed. Perhaps that earliest idea of self-employment by necessity from centuries before will return.
My father, after years of self-employment as a journalist, chose to move into a different sector - still communications, but now digital, and became an employer. Still self-employed, but then with a duty of care to others. And in his later years, he shifted again, to run a small shop in the place I grew up.
Multiple forms of employment and self-employment within a single career.
Perhaps that's the future of work - a far more blended, hybrid type of career of periods of self-employment and employment, by choice and by circumstance.