How Many Americans Are Self-Employed in 2023?
The benefits of being self-employed are clear—work flexibility, not having to answer to a boss, getting to choose the work you want to do, and more.
If you’re thinking about becoming a self-employed worker in the US, it helps to get an overview of the trends and statistics about self-employment—more specifically, understand how many Americans are self-employed.
Number of self-employed in the US in 2022 and 2023
According to the latest figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as of September 2023, the number of self-employed people in the US is 9.73 million. This represents a 2.3% increase from the previous month but a 1.3% annual fall.
The number of self-employed in the US has been fluctuating over the past year. In September 2022, there were 9.85 million self-employed. This rose in October, to 9.95 million, only to decline by 2.7% to 9.69 million in November. This was followed by three consecutive months of increases, and the number of self-employed in the US surpassed 10 million in February 2023 to hit 10.1 million. This is also the highest number of self-employed recorded so far in 2023.
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Coronavirus impact on the number of self-employed in the US
In 2020, the number of self-employed in the US tumbled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The lowest number recorded was in April 2020. At 8.25 million, this was an 11% year-over-year decrease, and the first time the number of self-employed workers in the US fell below 9 million in at least seven years.
The decline in the number of self-employed in the US was caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in work losses for many of the self-employed in the US. This is no surprise, as self-employed workers are among the most vulnerable during economic downturns and tend to be the first ones to be made redundant.
According to the BLS, self-employed workers were “much more likely” to have lost work as a result of the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic than workers in the private and government sectors.
This was most evident in May 2020, during which 42.2% of self-employed workers said they weren’t able to work at some point in the past month as a result of the pandemic. The situation has improved since. The latest figures from September 2022 show that just 2% of self-employed workers in the US continue to struggle with this problem.
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