Why is everyone going freelance?
In our ongoing series exploring the fundamentals of freelancing, we look at the motivations to go self-employed and ask "Why is everyone going freelance?"
Don't believe the hype, not everyone is going freelance.
Globally, in fact, the number of self-employment is in decline, and has been for a long time.
The World Bank has figures which show a drop from over 55% in 1990, down to as low as 46% just before 2020.
That's right, around half of the global workforce are already self-employed (so when you hear that figure being thrown around, it's not that impressive, as it's been true for a long time).
But zooming into the UK, we see the data is quite different.
In 1990, there were around ~3.54 million self-employed, which rose to around 5m in 2019 - which is around 15% of the workforce. Then COVID hit, and we saw a drop from 5m to 4.2m. Today, we've seen a slow steady increase back up to around 4.4m in early 2025.
Current forecasts suggest we'll continue to see a slow but steady growth in these numbers, with perhaps just 4.5m in self-employment by 2030 (although my estimates are higher, and I'll explain why below), if anything, some forecasts suggest increases self-employment may decline or flatten out.
And this week, new data was published by ONS, showing that full-time self-employment has declined year on year by just over 1%, but part-time self-employment (i.e. side hustlers, gig work, etc) has grown over 5%.
So to claim "more and more people are going self-employed" is not entirely true. Yes, it's growing in some parts, declining in some ways, and it's below the figures a few years ago, despite it feeling like there is more and more competition.
What may be happening to make it feel like there's more competition is increases in certain sectors - like the creative industries, in particular - marketing, film and tv, technology and media.
This is prompted by successive years of redundancies and lay-offs across the sector, and a challenging job market. Many people simply find themselves in "enforced" self-employment, in addition to those who are actively choosing to step into self-employment.
In the coming years, I believe we're likely to see more growth than forecasted in self-employment - a combination of poor economic growth in the UK, leading to further job cuts and many hirers reducing their headcount, and the effects of AI, with employers further reducing their perm staff and leaning heavily on technology and automation for many roles. especially with in the creative, digital and production sector. Whilst there is lots of reason to be optimistic about the potential for AI - in the short term, I believe it will see dramatic cuts in people being hired, and significant job losses.
Many of these people, finding themselves out of work, may well consider freelancing as an option, or if unable to find another role, may find themselves having no other option, but to try and find contract work between perm roles.
On the flipside, hirers will still need humans to do work - but it may be in more specialist roles, or on shorter terms - my belief is that most work will move towards a more project based model, over rolling employment. Build a team for something specific, and then disband it afterwards. Sound familiar?
This is, of course, a positive thing for freelancers - but if there's an oversupply of freelancers, it could become more challenging to find work.
My forecasts are that self-employment will spike in the coming 2-3 years, with much higher numbers of enforced-self-employment, and then flatten off a little, as the jobs market readjusts. Much of this freelance workforce will not be here by choice.
For those who are choosing to step into self-employment though, and freelancing in particular, what are the reasons behind it? For the last five years, we've been asking people the motivations behind their decision.
And whilst the there's obviously variability in the answers over time, the top responses are consistent:
Flexibility and control.
To build work around life, not life around work.
And to have the opportunity to decide what work you do.
Back in 2019, we went deep on the motivations:
Having more control over the work I do.
Having more control over when I work.
Having more control over where I work.
Not being told what work to do, but having the ability to choose.
If we researched employees too, I expect we'd probably find similar desires from everyone - the idea of having more control over our work, how and when we work, is not unique to the self-employed.
Unsurprisingly, the "wanted control over where I work" shifted from around 40% to almost nothing, in 2020/2021, with the enforced remote working policies, working from home was no longer something which you had to go freelance to get. That's changing again now, with return to office mandates.
But this core idea of more control over one's work is critical, and core to the ideal of self-employment.
A sense of control over our destiny and fortunes.
The idea that we get to say yes to the work we love the sound of, and no to the projects we don't want to do.
Employment rarely gives us this opportunity. In fact, even in tax legislation, it's one of the defining factors of employment. If you're being told when/where/how and what to work on - that's really the filter for whether you're an employee or self-employed. This is why you see so many people saying "that's not freelancing" when gig postings list "working on site 4 days a week". It's all about control.
Secondarily, we also see many people saying they're choosing to step into self-employment for their own wellbeing. 27% back in 2019, 34% in 2024. Whilst freelancing has it's challenges, most people do see improvements in their mental health when going self-employed (although considering all of the challenges freelancing offers, it's possible that speaks more to just how bad most employment roles are!).
The need to create time, space and equity between work and not work, again is a desire for control, but also a desire for balance. To be able to live a whole life, not life around the edges of work.
Increased income often ranks highly in the list of reasons - although on average, the self-employed are making less than the employed. In freelancing because it's hard to break out "freelancers" within ONS data, it's not as easy to tell if people are doing better on average. 2024 was a challenging year for many, and the nature of freelancing means there's no guarantee you'll make more money. About 20-30 years ago, you'd probably pay marginally less tax - but even that is levelling out in recent years. And of course we don't get paid holiday, sick leave, parental leave, or pension contributions. So the drive to make more money and the reality might not always stack up. But it's still a very common motivator.
And then whilst towards the bottom of the chat, but by no means a small number, we have people who find themselves in self-employment because they need the flexibility, or were unable to find permanant work. A good proportion of this group chose to go freelance, but still, there was an underlying truth that self-employment offered opportunties for flexibilty which employment did not. Many in the "didn't chose to go self-employed" still very much say they are glad to be working in this way, but many felt they had little other choice. Some 30% of our group last year were not self-employed by choice. To be in an working model which you feel you're forced into is rarely going to yield good outcomes.
Digging deeper into the motivations though - we also see a sense of wanting to "create something". The idea of a sense of achievement from demonstrating you can do it on your own. The sense of progress from taking steps forward and finding success, and having no-one but you to take the credit.
This sense of creative pride is a powerful one.
Not everyone would call themselves an entrepreneur. Not all freelancers see themselves as running a business. Not all of the self-employed are looking to create something bigger than themseles.
But I think almost all freelancers have this combination of desire for control and pride in what they create.
For many, it's about stepping away from the politics or nonsense of work, and focusing on their craft, as a practitioner. The idea of excelling at what you do, and exclusively working on what you're good at.
It's attractive.
And for many, it's the underlying reason we do this.
Passion for and pride in our work.
Recently seen:
» New data from The Film and TV Charity on loneliness shows self-employed are significantly affected, as shown in our data from last year too. I’ll be unpacking the report in more detail over the coming weeks.
That’s all from me this week.
✌️ mk