Solo self‐employment––Key policy challenges

This study reviews key policy challenges relating to solo self-employed workers––the segment with increasing shares in the workforce most developed countries recent decades. We document that this attracts attention of policymakers within four domains: addressing decent work deficits, entrepreneurship and small business policies, activating marginalized groups through self-employment, improving well-being self-employed. offer an integrative framework enabling analysis synergies contradictions various initiatives targeting The argues workers who persistently employ only themselves should be understood as a (third) labor market qualitatively distinct from traditionally defined categories “employee” or “employer.” A policy-oriented segmentation contemporary using “blurred trinary divide” is proposed size estimates its segments subsegments. Finally, discusses prospects emerging post-pandemic economy offers recommendations regarding future research data collection.