Profile of Self-Employed Persons and Full-Time Freelancers

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Manpower as at 31 December 2011, how many people in the labour force are self-employed and working as full-time freelancers and what is their educational breakdown in terms of numbers of those who are diploma holders and those with qualifications of degrees and above.

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam: As of June 2011 4 , among 1,998,900 employed residents, 299,800 (or 15%) were self-employed. Of these, 40,600 (or 14%) had diplomas or professional qualifications, while 61,900 (or 21%) had degree and above qualifications. Compared to employees, there are proportionally fewer self-employed with diploma and above qualifications.

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There are three groups of self-employed persons: (i) employers, (ii) contributing family workers, and (iii) own account workers. "Own account workers" refer to self-employed persons who operate their own business or trade without employing any paid worker 5 . Table 1 captures the statistical breakdown. We do not have data specifically on freelancers.