Self-employed person

A person who works for his/her own account and risk.

For this two perspectives are used:

1) Self-employed person (socioeconomic perspective)
A person who works for his/her own account and risk
- in an own company or practice (self-employed entrepreneur), or
- as an owner-manager, or
- in the company or practice of a family member (contributing family worker), or
- as another self-employed person (for example in an independent profession).

2) Self-employed person (economic perspective)
A person who works for his/her own account and risk
- in an own company or practice (self-employed entrepreneur), or
- in the company or practice of a family member (contributing family worker), or
- as another self-employed person (for example in an independent profession).
Owner-managers can be treated as employees, because just like employees, they receive payment from the company they work for ór they can be treated as self-employed persons, because their position and responsibilities in the company are similar to those of other self-employed persons. From an economical perspective owner-managers are therefore considered as employees, from a socioeconomic perspective they are considered as self-employed persons. Contributing family workers are, regardless of the perspective, are considered as self-employed persons unless they have an employment contract. Domestic staff, host families, babysitters and newspaper boys are also considered as self-employed persons. In register data and surveys however, these types of labour hardly exist, for the National Accounts they are therefore estimated.

People who work as an employee and as a self-employed person, will be classified as a self-employed person when this type of employment according to the income (National Accounts and Income Statistics) or the number of hours they work (LFS) is the main employment.

In the statistics on the demography of companies the number of companies and their activity is determined. Although companies and not self-employed persons are counted, it is possible to make a connection between the company and the self-employed entrepreneur or owner-manager.

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