photo by quinn.anya
More than 20 million Americans are self-employed, and other developed nations around the globe also have similarly large groups of people working for themselves. The rank of the self-employed is growing fast as people discover the freedom of being their own bosses.
For those of you considering a new career path that keeps you free from the Dilbert/Office Space lifestyle, here are six tried-and-true options you might want to check out:
Laura Vanderkam wrote an excellent article over at the City Journal about the ins and outs of the freelance economy. She talks about the benefits of self-employment to both the individual and the overall economy. She also points to a study that showed that self-employment has boosted the overall business-sector productivity of the U.S.
Her most interesting conclusions are around the issue of health care, both the difficulty in finding coverage and the expense of it for self-employed people. Because of the health care situation, some self-employed are forced to seek jobs with corporations. The situation is also increasing support for a national universal health care system:
Over at Techcrunch, they have a transcript of an interview with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, on Charlie Rose. He talks about a lot of stuff, including the recent financial bailout by the American government. The most interesting parts, however, are what he says about entrepreneurship.
Hoffman says that everyone is now an entrepreneur essentially because of how often the average person changes jobs. Since everyone is looking for a new job or promotion every 2 years, we’re all salespeople in the sense that we’re selling ourselves. He is probably drinking the LinkedIn koolade to some degree, and he definitely refers to the tools someone might use to look for a new job or make new contacts. I totally agree with him on the idea, though.
free
Exempt from external authority, interference, restriction, etc., as a person or one’s will, thought, choice, action, etc.; independent; unrestricted.
pur·suit
An activity, such as a vocation or hobby, engaged in regularly.
What’s holding you back from living the life you want to? How are some people able to spend months vacationing every year and enjoy expensive time-consuming hobbies while you’re stuck working like mad at a job you don’t really even enjoy?
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