The nature of self-employment is changing in most OECD countries. Solo self-employment is increasing relative to self-employment with dependent employees, often being associated with the development of gig economy work and alternative work arrangements. We still know little about this changing composition of jobs. Drawing on ad-hoc surveys run in the UK, US, and Italy, we document that solo self-employment is substantively different from self-employment with employees, being an intermediate status between employment and unemployment, and for some, becoming a new frontier of underemployment. Its spread originates a strong demand for social insurance which rarely meets an adequate supply given the informational asymmetries of these jobs. Enforcing minimum wage legislation on these jobs and reconsidering the preferential tax treatment offered to self-employment could discourage abuse of these positions to hide de facto dependent employment jobs. Improved measures of labor slack should be developed to acknowledge that, over and above unemployment, some of the solo self-employment and alternative work arrangements present in today's labor market are placing downward pressure on wages.

中文翻译：

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个体自谋职业和替代性工作安排：跨国视角的工作构成变化

在大多数经合组织国家，自营职业的性质正在发生变化。相对于有受抚养雇员的个体经营，个体个体经营正在增长，通常与零工经济工作和其他工作安排的发展有关。对于这种不断变化的工作组成，我们仍然知之甚少。根据在英国，美国和意大利进行的临时调查，我们记录到，单身自雇与员工自雇在本质上是不同的，它是就业与失业之间的中间地位，并且在某些情况下成为新的领域就业不足。它的传播引发了对社会保险的强烈需求，鉴于这些工作的信息不对称，很少满足足够的供应。加强对这些工作的最低工资立法，并重新考虑对自营职业提供的税收优惠待遇，可能会阻止滥用这些职位来掩盖事实上的依赖就业的工作。应该开发出改进的劳动力松弛措施，以认识到，除了失业以外，当今劳动力市场上存在的一些个体自谋职业和替代性工作安排正在对工资造成下行压力。