The role of self-employment in U.S. and Canadian job growth

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 122, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 10-23

  Manser, Marilyn E ^a   Picot, Garnett ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0009940003     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. For comparisons of net and gross job creation, job security, and job stability between Canada and the United States over the past two decades, see Marilyn E. Manser and Garnett Picot, "Job Creation in Canada and the United States: What Do We Know and Where Are the Data Gaps?" Paper presented at the Voorburg Meetings on Service Sector Statistics, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 1997; and Garnett Picot and Marilyn E. Manser, "Job Stability in Canada and the United States: What We Know and the Data Gaps," Paper presented at the Voorburg Meetings on Service Sector Statistics, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 1997.
2. For comparisons of net and gross job creation, job security, and job stability between Canada and the United States over the past two decades, see Marilyn E. Manser and Garnett Picot, "Job Creation in Canada and the United States: What Do We Know and Where Are the Data Gaps?" Paper presented at the Voorburg Meetings on Service Sector Statistics, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 1997; and Garnett Picot and Marilyn E. Manser, "Job Stability in Canada and the United States: What We Know and the Data Gaps," Paper presented at the Voorburg Meetings on Service Sector Statistics, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 1997.
3. Interestingly, one analyst, using U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances data, has found that the self-employed were substantially overrepresented in the ranks of the rich in 1983, and that they gained share at the top of the distribution between 1983 and 1995. See Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in the Size Distribution of Household Wealth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998, pp. 131-50.
4. For a discussion of the determinants and consequences of self-employment, see, for example, D.B. Blanchflower and A.J. Oswald, "What Makes an Entrepreneur?" Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 16, no. 1, 1998, pp. 26-60, and references therein.
5. Estimates of the preferences of the self-employed to be working for themselves have been calculated internally at BLS, based on responses to the Contingent and Alternative Work Arrangement supplements to the CPS conducted in February 1995 and February 1997. The Canadian data are published in Earnest Akyeampong, "Work Arrangements: 1995 Overview," Perspectives on Labour and Income, Spring 1997, pp. 48-53.
6. Elaine Reardon, "Self-employment in Canada and the United States, Unpublished paper (Santa Monica, CA, The Miken Institute, June 1997).
7. H.J. Schuetze, "Taxes, Economic Conditions and the Recent Trends in Male Self-Employment: A Canada-U.S. Comparison," Paper presented at the 1998 Canadian Economics Association meetings, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, May 1998.
8. Differences discussed here are significant at the 90-percent level, unless otherwise indicated. Approximate standard errors for the U.S. estimates in table 2, calculated using generalized variance function techniques, are available upon request. Estimated standard errors for the Canadian estimates in table 3 also are available.
9. Fewer than 30 hours per week in Canada, fewer than 35 hours per week in the United States.
10. Theresa J. Devine examined trends in total self-employment using CPS March Supplement data for 1974-1990. She found an increase in the self-employment rate in the U.S. nonagricultural sector over that period which was greater for women than for men. (Over the period 1979-89, the percent self-employed rose somewhat more in the nonagricultural sector - from 9.8 percent to 10.3 percent - than it did for all industries - from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent.) Devine focused on the self-employment situation of women. She compared the characteristics of self-employed women with the characteristics of women in the wage-and-salary sector, as well as with the characteristics of self-employed men. See Theresa J. Devine, "Characteristics of self-employed women in the United States, Monthly Labor Review March 1994, pp. 20-34.
11. Labour Force Update: The Self-Employed, Catalogue 71-005-XPB (Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 1997).
12. U.S. estimates are based on data from the monthly Current Population Survey. Tables corresponding to tables 2 and 3 of this article, but referring to unincorporated self-employment only, are available upon request. For the categories examined here, the characteristics of the unincorporated self-employed in 1994 are presented and discussed in John E. Bregger, "Measuring self-employment in the United States," Monthly Labor Review, January/February 1996, pp. 3-9.
13. Z. Lin, J. Yates, and G. Picot, "The Entry and Exit Dynamics of Self-Employment in Canada," mimeo. (Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 1998).
14. Z. Lin, J. Yates, and G., Picot, "Rising Self-employment in the Midst of High Unemployment An Empirical Analysis of Recent Developments in Canada," Paper 133 (Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 1999).
15. This was explored in Schuetze, "Taxes, Economic Conditions and the Recent Trends in Male Self-Employment."