16/01/13

Freelancing - a £200bn question

by David Philpott, chairman of IoD Kent Branch

Who wants to be a freelancer?

It would seem that the term freelancer was first coined in 1819 by Sir Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe.

Scott describes Italian and French mercenaries as “freelances,” meaning they were free men who offered their services (in this case, their skill with a lance) to wealthy land owners.

Today the term conjures up all sorts of images but usually all positive.

A freelance artist or journalist, say, is generally perceived to be a free agent, a creative person who can ply their trade unfettered by the narrow imagination of a gallery owner or an editor.

Free and unfettered they may be, but like all self-employed people there are, of course, the pros and cons familiar to all those who operate without any kind of safety net to earn a living.

What do we know about the contribution freelancers make to the British economy?

Well, for many individuals, it has been the silver lining of these times of austerity, as gifted people the length and breadth of the county – finding themselves made redundant or worse – have had to re-invent themselves into something new, all the experience garnered in their previous working life now forged into something new.

As I write, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there are 4.2 million people working as freelancers in Britain – that’s 14% of the workforce.

Seventy per cent of these earn more than the average salary. In fact, the average salary of a freelancer is £50,820, some £25k more or thereabouts than average for an employed worker.

However, before all of you who work in the public sector or for large corporations rush out and hand your notice in, consider the downside.

A quarter of freelancers do not take any annual leave and those who do continue working while on holiday (and as a freelancer myself, don’t I know it!).

Furthermore, one in four freelancers accepts that they will not be in a position to retire until after the age of 70 and a sizeable proportion work in excess of 50 hours a week.

The ONS estimates that last year freelancers contributed a staggering £202 billion to the British economy.

Yet unlike other sectors like banking, insurance or publishing, they have no collective voice – nobody shouting their story from the rooftops.

Thr Chinese Year of the Snake, starts on February 4, 2013.

We don’t need any more snakes in British business so I would like to suggest that we make 2013 the British Year of the Freelancer so that this under-recognised, hardworking category of entrepreneur is rightly lauded for their epic contribution in pulling Britannia up by the bootstraps and out of economic stagnation.