Self employed figures

We now have 4.55m self employed people in the UK, up 375,000 over the past year say Harris & Co accountants Northampton. However, although the Office for National Statistics knows that self employed people work longer than employed people, apparently it has no idea how much they earn!

 

Considering how significant a part of the economy the self employed are, it calls into question just how accurate the ONS’s figures for GDP and economic growth are – especially as they quote growth figures of fractions of a percent each quarter.

 

The ONS could easily get the data on self employed earnings, I would have thought, by looking at the tax return data!

 

Despite the lack of data, the Resolution Foundation has recently published a report on self employed earnings. They concluded that self employed people earn 40% less than employed people!