News

From 2011 to 2015, the number of Americans earning more than $100,000 per year in 1099 income jumped 45 percent, according to MBO Partners, which supplies back-office support to the self-employed.

MBO Partners, which describes itself as a provider of independent contractor engagement solutions, announced its pilot launch of what it is calling MBO Connect, a tool for directly engaging contractors, consultants and freelancers.

The Freelancers Union, which advocates for self-employed people of all kinds, recently came up with the 53 million number Warner mentioned. MBO Partners, which provides tools for businesses that use contractors, put it at 30.2 million.

Gene Zaino was interviewed on KABC radio (Los Angeles) during the McIntyre in the Morning commute show. During the interview, Gene discussed MBO’s State of Independence report as well as the reasons people are shifting away from traditional jobs towards self-employment.

There are 30.2 million independent — full-time and part-time — workers in the U.S. economy. That’s up 12% over the last 5 years, according to a new study by MBO Partners and Emergent Research. By 2020, the study projects the independent workforce will be up to nearly 38 million workers.

That’s one message from two important surveys released this week: MBO Partners’ fifth annual “State of Independence” report, which came out Tuesday, and the second annual “Freelancing in America” report, sponsored by the Freelancers Union and Upwork, which is out today.

The Upwork report follows another report out earlier this week on the independent workforce by MBO Partners. Upwork defines a freelancer as “individuals who have engaged in supplemental, temporary, project- or contract-based work, within the past 12 months.” At 34% of the US workforce, that equates to an estimated 53.7 million people, according to the…

But that total is well shy of a projection made earlier this week in an MBO Partners independent labor report, which estimates the domestic economy holds 30.2 million independent workers who are at least 21 years old. The country’s independent workforce has ballooned 12 percent in the last five years alone, according to the report…

A study conducted by MBO Partners looked at a variety of professions and noticed that a sizable section of the independent workforce are young workers, who are taking “gigs” with startups such as ride-sharing giant Uber or delivery services like Instacart, reported Agence France Presse.

Despite fears that independent workers would return to “traditional” employment as the economy recovered from the Great Recession, the independent population continues to grow — nearly twice as fast as U.S. employment, according to MBO Partners 2015 State of Independence in America, the industry’s only comprehensive dive into five years of independent workforce data.