Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to look at how self-employed workers are feeling about their jobs and how that compares with workers who aren’t self-employed. To do this, we surveyed 5,775 U.S. adults – including 557 who are self-employed – who have only one job or have more than one job but consider one of them to be their primary job.
To identify self-employed workers, we asked all employed adults: “Which of the following best describes where you work? A private company, a nonprofit organization, government (including federal, state, or local government, public schools, college and universities), self-employed (including business owner and independent contractor, freelance worker), other.”
All the workers who took part are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Address-based sampling ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
The demographic profile of workers is based on analysis of the Current Population Survey (CPS). In the CPS, workers with multiple sources of employment are classified according to the job in which they worked the most hours. Unpaid family workers, those who are unemployed but seeking full-time or part-time work, and those who are not in the labor force are not included in this analysis.
Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and the survey’s methodology.
