The working hours of non self-employed workers are often fixed in employment contracts, the self-employed must provide their own work and hours to the client to be billed. During the economic crisis freelancers had less income, less work and they more often reported that they wanted to work more hours. Non self-employed often work full-time, and only few of them want to work more hours. The proportion of employees who want to work longer hours is less than the proportion of freelancers: more than 12% of employees would like to work more hours. This proportion has increased in the recent years, but still is lower than among freelancers.
The proportion of freelancers in the active labor force has increased steadily in recent years, from just over 8% in 2003 to just over 12%in 2015. There are over one million self-employed. Although being an employee still prevails, the proportion of employees in the workforce will gradually deteriorate. The proportion of self-employed with employees remained unchanged.
Almost half of the freelancers work part-time. That is slightly less than the non-freelancers. 40% of the self-employed with 12 to 20 hours working week want to work more hours, while ten years ago this was a quarter. Just few full-time freelancers want to change their working hours, as they are usually already working long hours.
In general, mainly self-employed with low and medium education want to work increasingly longer hours. Only about 20% of highly educated freelancers want to work more hours.
Women want to make more longer hours than men. This applies to employees as well as freelancers, and mainly due to the fact that women more often work part-time. Young people want to work more hours more often than older people.
Freelancers who offer their own labor want to work more hours more than freelancers who mainly sell products, this also relates to the fact that the first group often works part time. It is mainly in the service sectors where they would like to work more hours. This is especially true for self-employed in the sector of consultancy, research and specialist services.
Source: CBS