Dependent self-employment is widely perceived as a rapidly growing form of precarious work conducted by marginalised lower-skilled workers subcontracted by large corporations. Unpacking a comprehensive survey of 35 European countries, Colin C. Williams and Ioana Alexandra Horodnic map the lived realities of the distribution and characteristics of dependent self-employment to challenge this broad and erroneous perception.

This book investigates work relationships on the border between employment and self-employment. Bringing together economic, sociological and legal research approaches, it analyses why firms deploy dependent self-employed workers, why individuals supply this form of work and by which informal and formal mechanism dependency is created.

Since the 1970s the long term decline in self-employment has slowed – and even reversed in some countries – and the prospect of ‘being your own boss’ is increasingly topical in the discourse of both the general public and within academia. Traditionally, self-employment has been associated with independent entrepreneurship, but increasingly it has become a form of precarious work. This book utilises evidence-based information to address both the current and future challenges of this trend as the nature of self-employment changes, as well as to demonstrate where, when and why self-employment has emerged as precarious work in Europe.

Taken together, the thirteen chapters of thisbook shed light on the factors leading individuals into self-employment.The volume examines the impact of economic change on the character,composition, and stability of self-employment.A theoretical framework fora cross-national study of self-employment dynamics is presented, as is a reviewof the changing employment structures and the opportunities and constraintsassociated with self-employment. (SAA) Table of Contents Trends in Self-Employment in Germany: Different Types, DifferentDevelopments? Henning Lohmann and Silvia Luber Entries and Exits from Self-Employment in France over the Last Twenty Years,Thomas Amossé and Dominique Goux Dutch Self-Employment between 1980 and 1997, Boris F. Blumberg and PaulM. de Graaf Self-Employment in the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s, NigelMeager and Peter Bates Entrepreneurs and Laborers: Two Sides of Self-Employment Activity in theUnited States, Richard Arum Self-Employment in Australia, 1980-1999, M.D.R. Evans and JoannaSikora Winners or Losers? Entry and Exit into Self-Employment in Hungary: 1980s and1990s, Péter Róbert and Erzsébet Bukodi Three Forms of Emergent Self-Employment in Post-Soviet Russia: Entry andExit Patterns by Gender, Theodore P. Gerber Self-Employment in Italy: Scaling the Class Barriers, Paolo Barbieri andIvano Bison Entry into and Exit from Self-Employment in Japan, Hiroshi Ishida On One's Own: Self-Employment Activity in Taiwan, Wei-hsin Yu andKuo-Hsien Su The Reemergence of Self-Employment: Comparative Findings and EmpiricalPropositions, Richard Arum and Walter Müller.

The 2019 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook presents new evidence on changes in job stability, underemployment and the share of well-paid jobs, and discusses the policy implications of these changes with respect to how technology, globalisation, population ageing, and other megatrends are transforming the labour market in OECD countries.