1. LAMAS Working Group 24-25 June 2014
Agenda Item 3.4 LFS ad-hoc module 2017: progress report

2. Structure of the presentation
List and description of the ad-hoc sub-modules [part of the amendment of Regulation 318/2013 on the programme of AHMs ]
Dependent self-employment
Testing

3. Progress since the last LAMAS meeting
New concept: dependent self-employment
New measuring approach
Structure of sub-modules
Dependent self-employment
Working conditions of the self-employed
Self-employed and employees
Draft questionnaire available for testing

4. S1: Dependent self-employment
Target population: all self-employed
Objective: to identify the group of dependent self-employed
Shared features of the employees and of self-employed
Ambivalent professional situation

5. S2: Working conditions of the self-employed
Target population: all self-employed
New perspectives:
Reason for becoming self-employed
and, possibly:
Main difficulty when working as a self-employed
Support received when launching the business
Number of months without income in a year
Reason to work without employees (STAPRO=2)

6. S3: Self-employed and employees
Comparing self-employed to employees
Rich information available in the LFS
New perspectives:
Job satisfaction
and, possibly:
Workload / time pressure
Sufficiency of the pension contribution
Reasons for not working as self-employed for employees preferring to be self-employed

7. Dependent self-employment
Sub-group of self-employed with or without employees
Sub-group of self-employed sharing features with the employees:
Economic dependency
Organisational dependency
Limitations in decision-making
Self-perceived dependency
Other types of dependency

8. Who are the self-employed sharing features with employees?
Persons having:
The level of economic risks of the self-employed
The lack of autonomy of an employee
Can we use the same grid to identify employees sharing features with self-employed?
No, several populations resulting:
Low level of job security
High level of autonomy

9. Identifying dependency – 3 variables
Several theoretical approaches possible
Unlikely that a single AHM-type variable will capture dependent self-employment
It is proposed to test several variables. Analyse:
How easy is it to collect the information?
How close is the theoretical group to the empirical group?

10. 1. High share of revenue coming from one single client
Indication of economic dependency
The entity providing the main part (>75%) of revenue plays a similar role to that of an employer
One step beyond the number of clients
The variable needs to be read in a context: a self-employed working on an exclusive, long-term contract is not necessarily in a vulnerable position

11. 2. Lack of freedom to organise work
Indication of organisational dependency
Who decides/determines work organisation?
Work done for AHM 2015 as well
Concepts are rather broad, sensitive to translation
If measurable, the variable complements the previous one

12. 3. Legal impediments to hire
It should be possible for a self-employed person to hire employees, provided that it was affordable
The self-employed that have legal impediments to hire work under a contract/arrangement are indicating a form of legal dependency
It needs to be checked if the information can be collected in one (this) question

13. Dependent self-employment measured in three variables
Combination of three variables:
Dependent self-employment =
Economic AND (Organisational OR Legal) Dependency
(May 2014 TF proposal, to be checked by testing)

14. Testing the draft questionnaire
DE, HU, NL, RO, SK will receive the draft questionnaire at end of August, by (EU co-financing)
Small-scale testing of the sub-module on dependent self-employment is encouraged
All other countries are invited to analyse whether the national cases of 'ambiguous professional situations' would be well captured by the approach proposed
Please share information with the task force!

15. LAMAS is asked to:
Comment on the progress made, and on the dependent self-employment sub-module in particular