Archive for June, 2009
For the past 20 years, most of the net addition to employ in advanced economies has come from self-employment or from small companies. The trend will accelerate in the next twenty years, as the structural changes wrought by the new technologies play themselves out. In some countries, there is already nearly half of nongovernment jobs come from companies with fewer than fifty on staffs, and almost one person in seven is self-employed- much higher than other country, where the promotion is one in twelve.
Clearly, countries will have to adapt their social systems. The U.S seems to be ahead in building this wide-open, individualized workplace of the future. Entrepreneurship is prized and supported through such things as relatively lenient bankruptcy laws and the availability of venture capital. New houses sometimes come equipped with home offices. But in one important way-how it provides health care-the U.S. is way behind. The cost of health care is a serious deterrent to leaving a job that provides good coverage. Continental Europe scopes with the health care of the self-employed pretty well. But it fails in its labor legislation, its burdensome social security levies, and its barriers to new business.