Open Access Journal Article

Does ‘Being Your Own Boss’ raise your chance of becoming someone else’s Boss?

by Lixin Cai a,* orcid
a
Future of Employment and Skills Research Centre, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
EAL  2023, 43; 2(4), 43; https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02040008
Received: 23 March 2023 / Accepted: 7 August 2023 / Published Online: 15 December 2023
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Abstract

Self-employment is often associated with entrepreneurship and regarded as a driver of innovation, job creation and economic growth. As such, many countries have policies to promote and support self-employment. One mechanism for self-employment to drive job growth is for sole traders to become an employer through hiring employees. However, there are few studies that investigate if solo self-employment helps the transitions into employership. Using the Understanding Society data, this study shows that in the UK labour market solo self-employment does not work as a ‘steppingstone’ to employership. This raises the question why self-employment should be promoted through public policy as in the UK and many other developed countries.

Keywords: Solo self-employment; Employership; Steppingstone effects;
Copyright: © 2023 by Cai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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ACS Style
Cai, L. Does ‘Being Your Own Boss’ raise your chance of becoming someone else’s Boss?. Economic Analysis Letters, 2023, 2, 43. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02040008
AMA Style
Cai L. Does ‘Being Your Own Boss’ raise your chance of becoming someone else’s Boss?. Economic Analysis Letters; 2023, 2(4):43. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02040008
Chicago/Turabian Style
Cai, Lixin 2023. "Does ‘Being Your Own Boss’ raise your chance of becoming someone else’s Boss?" Economic Analysis Letters 2, no.4:43. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02040008
APA style
Cai, L. (2023). Does ‘Being Your Own Boss’ raise your chance of becoming someone else’s Boss?. Economic Analysis Letters, 2(4), 43. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal02040008

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