Archive for August 2016

Recently, I met with Gene Zaino, president and CEO of MBO Partners, which provides back-office support to independent workers, and his team at his office in Herndon, Va., to discuss how this could be achieved.

Why is that a problem? In a word, productivity. A recent report by MBO Partners says that independent workers contribute just 7% of the nation’s GDP. In other words, self-employed workers are less than half as productive as their counterparts with full-time jobs. And that’s a real problem.

MBO Partners, a company that provides enterprise software to the firms that employ independent workers, estimated that there were nearly 40 million independent workers over the age of 20 in 2015.

Of the 16.9 million self-employed workers MBO Partners recently identified as actively working full time in the U.S., 63% want to stay independent, compared with the 22% who want to build a bigger business from their solo efforts. At the same time, only 3% call ourselves entrepreneurs.

Two statistics tell the story: In the U.S., there are currently nearly 40 million self-employed workers age 21 and over, according to the 2016 State of Independence report by MBO Partners. By 2021, the research firm predicts that just under half of the U.S. population (48%) will be independent or have tried independent work in…