Time Use of the Self-Employed

SUMMARY It is a well-documented empirical regularity that it is more satisfying to be self-employed than to work as an employee for an organization. A large part of this difference in job satisfaction is attributed in the literature to the strong perception of independence by the self-employed. In this paper we study people's time use as a source of entrepreneurial independence. By making use of disaggregated sequential microdata on people's time use, we are able to document that the self-employed work longer effective hours, as well as more in the evenings and weekends, than those employed by an organization. Even though being able to decide when to do one's work may be a sign of flexibili…