More Self-Employed Workers Than Employees Hold Quality Jobs

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Self-employed workers are a growing segment of the U.S. workforce, and they are more likely than employees to have quality jobs. This finding is based on a new data analysis from the American Job Quality Study that defines quality according to how well a job rates on five dimensions, including financial wellbeing, autonomy, and opportunities for growth and development.

Self-employed workers, who are largely owner-operators or independent contractors and make up 14% of the U.S. workforce, report having more flexible schedules, greater control over how their work gets done, and more influence over working conditions and implementation of technology than traditional employees do. However, self-employment also involves trade-offs, such as longer hours, greater work encroachment on personal time, and lack of retirement and healthcare benefits that most employees have. For this study, “employees” are defined as workers whose employers deduct taxes from their pay and send them a federal W-2 form reporting their earnings and withholdings.

The American Job Quality Study is a multiyear collaboration launched in 2025 by Jobs for the Future, The Families & Workers Fund, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Gallup. The study is based on a nationally representative survey of more than 18,000 working U.S. adults, spanning industries, occupations and types of employment, that provides an in-depth, data-driven look at what makes jobs “work” — for people, businesses and the economy.

Job Quality by Worker Type

Less than half of all U.S. workers, 40%, have a quality job, based on the study’s criteria. However, more self-employed workers (46%) than employees (39%) currently work in a quality job.

The self-employed workforce is composed of a broad range of workers with a wide variety of work arrangements, including business owners, freelancers, gig workers and people who work on an informal basis. The common thread is that none of these workers are formally employed by a company.

Recognizing the diversity of this group, the study further divides the self-employed workforce into two core subgroups based on a fundamental distinction: whether they provide services to another entity or operate independently. About one-quarter of self-employed workers are “owner-operators” who operate independently as small-business owners, sole proprietors or LLCs, and set their own policies and practices. The remaining three-quarters of self-employed workers are “independent contractors” or “contract workers” who provide their individual labor or services to another entity through a formal agreement. They include app-based drivers, consultants and project-based contractors.

Among these two subgroups of self-employed workers, more owner-operators (50%) than independent contractors (45%) have quality jobs.

Why Are Self-Employed Workers More Likely to Have Quality Jobs?

Self-employed workers fare better than employees on three of the five dimensions of job quality measured in the survey. They differ most when it comes to having agency and voice (influence over key job aspects) and better work structure and more autonomy, and to a lesser extent on financial wellbeing.

Agency and Voice

Self-employment work is often associated with greater autonomy and, indeed, self-employed workers report substantially more influence over key aspects of their jobs than traditional employees do. Two-thirds of self-employed workers report high levels of agency and voice, compared with half of employees.

The American Job Quality Study measures worker agency and voice using a “voice gap” metric — the difference between how much influence workers have and how much influence they believe they should have, over three aspects of their jobs: compensation, working conditions and the adoption of new technologies.

Across all three areas, self-employed workers are significantly more likely than employees to say they have the level of influence they expect. The largest difference appears in compensation, where 61% of self-employed workers report having the influence they want, compared with just 31% of employees — a 30-percentage-point gap. Self-employed workers also report greater influence over technology adoption (73% versus 45%) and working conditions (76% versus 52%).

Among self-employed workers, owner-operators report higher levels of agency and voice than independent contractors: 73% of owner-operators meet the criteria for high agency and voice, compared with 63% of independent contractors. The largest gap between the two groups appears in influence over pay, where 78% of owner-operators say they have the level of control they expect, versus 55% of independent contractors.

Work Structure and Autonomy

Relatively few U.S. workers overall experience quality conditions in this dimension (16%), but self-employed workers (29%) are more than twice as likely as employees (14%) to do so. The work structure and autonomy dimension explores whether jobs provide a stable, predictable schedule, a manageable workload, and meaningful control over when and how work gets done.

The most notable differences between self-employed workers’ and employees’ experiences in this area are:

• Self-employed workers have more control over how they do their work: 57% strongly agree that they have “the freedom to decide how [they] do [their] work,” compared with 26% of employees.
• Roughly 60% of self-employed workers say they have “a lot of input” on each of the following: the number of hours they work each week; the days they work each week; and when they work each day. Between 22% and 25% of employees indicate they have a lot of input on the same three scheduling matters.

Financial Wellbeing

The financial wellbeing dimension captures whether jobs provide fair pay as well as stable employment and benefits that meet basic needs and reduce financial stress. Forty-eight percent of self-employed workers, compared with 39% of employees, score highly on the financial wellbeing dimension.

This advantage does not stem from higher earnings; more full-time employees (48%) than full-time self-employed workers (44%) report monthly income that is more than 300% above the federal poverty level for a family of two (the threshold used in the job quality report to represent the minimum earnings needed to qualify as a quality job).

Rather, the financial wellbeing dimension more broadly indicates whether workers’ pay, job security and overall financial situation meet their needs. On these measures, self-employed workers, particularly those who work part-time, report more stable and less stressful financial circumstances than their employee counterparts, suggesting that part-time self-employment more often reflects a deliberate choice than an economic constraint.

Trade-Offs of Self-Employment: Longer Hours, Lack of Safety Net

Although self-employed workers have more control over their work schedules, have more influence over decisions that shape their jobs, and report less financial distress than employees, their work arrangements also involve trade-offs. Self-employed workers typically work longer hours and are far less likely than employees to have benefits.

Demanding Schedules

Even though self-employed workers generally have more control over when they work, they also report longer hours and less predictable schedules:

• Self-employed workers work more hours than employees do. The average full-time self-employed worker logs 49 hours a week, compared with 43 hours for the average full-time employee.
• 65% of self-employed workers versus 54% of employees say they “often” or “sometimes” have to work longer than planned. Nearly one-quarter of self-employed workers (24%) often work longer than planned.
• Self-employed workers are somewhat more likely than employees to say their job demands often or sometimes interfere with their personal life (51% versus 45%).
• Fewer self-employed workers (36%) than employees (64%) work the same schedule every week or know their schedule at least two weeks in advance.

Lack of Benefits

Self-employed workers are also far less likely than employees to receive benefits that are commonly provided through traditional employment.

For example, more than half of self-employed workers, 53%, say they do not have a retirement plan. Among those who do have one, most pay for it themselves rather than receiving it through their current company. By contrast, just 19% of employees lack a retirement plan, while 71% have a retirement plan through their current employer.

Health insurance benefits show a similar pattern. Sixty-four percent of employees receive health coverage through their employer, while self-employed workers rely on a mix of sources — including a spouse or family member’s employer, purchasing coverage on their own, or public programs such as Medicaid or Medicare. Self-employed workers are nearly three times as likely as employees to have no health insurance at all (11% versus 4%).

Implications

The American Job Quality Study has demonstrated that U.S. workers in quality jobs are more satisfied not only with their jobs but also with their lives. These better outcomes associated with having a quality job apply to all workers, including those who are employed by an employer and those who are self-employed.

The potential benefits of a quality job are not limited to workers, either. The study finds that job satisfaction and worker wellbeing are consistently linked in prior research to stronger business outcomes, such as lower turnover, higher productivity and stronger performance.

Self-employed workers, who remain a small but growing share of the U.S. workforce, are often not examined except in the largest of surveys. The results presented here show that certain aspects of self-employment promote higher job quality, including greater say in how and when to complete job tasks and more influence over factors affecting job conditions. These aspects make up for some of the trade-offs inherent in self-employment, such as longer hours, encroachments on personal time, and lack of healthcare and retirement benefits.

The findings underscore that self-employed workers are not a monolith. Owner-operators and independent contractors have meaningfully different experiences, particularly on compensation and voice.

For organizations that contract with self-employed workers, the results point to concrete opportunities. Independent contractors look more like employees than owner-operators on several voice-gap measures — which means contracting organizations have real leverage to improve these workers' experiences. Examining how contracts are structured, how compensation is determined, and how much input workers have over the conditions of their engagement could meaningfully increase job quality for this group.

Read more about the American Job Quality Study.

Stay up to date with the latest insights by following @Gallup on X and on Instagram.