According to data published by the Daily Telegraph today 14% of UK’s workforce is now self-employed. And this excludes all those second jobbers and moonlighters which, as I mentioned in my recent interview on the BBC ,  is in fact the highest growing sector within PeoplePerHour’s community of 350,000 freelancers .

According to data published by the Office of National statistics there are now 367,000 more people who are self-employed than there were in 2008.

I commented both to the Telegraph and the Guardian today on what’s driving that growth. The recession is not the driver of change, it has been the catalyst. In a recent poll we conducted on PeoplePerHour, more than a third said the reason was to get a better work-life balance, and a quarter said it was to pursue a hobby or passion.

Freelancing is not a recessionary fad. It’s a structural change in the labour market. As in many step changes in the economy over the last century, recession has been a great catalyst and awakening call to accelerating that change.

Something interesting is happening in the world today. Whilst the first big step in technological evolution – the industrialization of the early 20th century- pulled masses of people out of their cottages and organised the workforce around large centralized institutions, the second wave underpinned by Information Technology revolution is seemingly reversing that trend and driving people back to their ‘cottage’. How is that?

Let’s take a few innovations that have become integral parts of our personal and business lives. Relatively recent yet ubiquitous innovations – the internet, social networks, the PC even and the mobile phone, or more lately the blackberry – what do all these have in common other than a few microchips? They are increasingly making us more connected, more mobile, more interdependent yet more independent in terms of how where and when we work. And ultimately more in control of our own time and space. So is this rendering the traditional office as we know it obsolete?continue reading »

Are we on the brinks of World War III? With the US losing its ground power is being shifted from the West to the emerging economies of the East. China looks set to become the new superpower. Unfortunately, as proven by history, a major shift like this has never occurred without war.

1) A weakening USA

The USA dictates much of what’s happening in the West. Here are the main drivers behind its decline:continue reading »