Self-Employment Statistics (2026)

About 16.5 million Americans were self-employed in September 2026, according to the BLS Current Population Survey. That covers 6.90 million incorporated business owners, who set up a corporation and often pay themselves a wage, plus 9.58 million unincorporated workers such as sole proprietors, freelancers, and gig workers (see the table below).

The count has drifted up in raw terms as the labor force has grown, hovering in the mid-16-million range from 2024 into 2026 (16.6 million in December 2025). Out of roughly 163.4 million people with a job, the self-employed make up about one in ten workers.

In share terms, the self-employed are about 10.1% of everyone employed (September 2026). That figure has been remarkably stable for the past decade, sitting around 10% since the mid-2010s even as the composition shifted toward incorporated owners.

The stability masks a much longer downtrend. A century ago, self-employment (including farming) was a far larger slice of American work. The modern plateau near 10% reflects a labor market now dominated by wage and salary jobs, with entrepreneurship a durable but minority path.

The self-employed split into two very different groups. Unincorporated self-employment (9.58 million people) is the classic freelancer or sole proprietor: no separate legal entity, income flowing straight onto a personal tax return. Incorporated self-employment (6.90 million) means the person formed a corporation, a group that skews toward larger, more established businesses.

The distinction matters for the trend line. The unincorporated rate has fallen steadily, from 8.7% of workers in 1994 to about 6.1% in 2023 and 5.9% in September 2026, while incorporated self-employment has grown, which reflects the professionalization of small business.

Self-employment's share of work has fallen for most of the postwar era. The BLS puts the rate near 18.5% in 1948, when agriculture (heavily self-employed) was a big employer, dropping to roughly 12.1% by 1994 and about 10% by the 2010s (see the chart and table below).

The biggest driver was the collapse of farm employment, where most workers were their own boss. As the economy shifted to wage-paying corporations and services, unincorporated self-employment thinned out. The rate has since flattened rather than kept falling (BLS Spotlight).

Self-employment clusters in a handful of industries. Using the Census Bureau's 2024 nonemployer businesses (firms with no paid staff, most of them self-employed), transportation and warehousing leads with about 4.5 million, ahead of professional/scientific/technical services (4.2 million), other services (3.4 million), real estate (3.3 million), administrative and support (3.1 million), construction (3.0 million), and health care (2.4 million) (see the chart and table below).

Transportation's lead reflects app-based driving and delivery: about 1.6 million taxi and limousine nonemployers and 1.6 million couriers and messengers in 2024. The rest of the mix reflects where solo work is natural: consultants, designers, and lawyers; hair stylists and repair shops; real-estate agents; tradespeople; and independent therapists. Capital-heavy sectors like manufacturing barely register.

Zoom into occupations and some are almost entirely self-employed. In BLS's detailed 2012 cut, 91.9% of news and street vendors and door-to-door sellers were self-employed, along with 73.1% of farmers and ranchers, 64.4% of writers and authors, 59.8% of photographers, and 56.7% of construction managers (see the chart and table below).

Real-estate agents, artists, musicians, and personal-care providers also rank high. Farmers, ranchers, and agricultural managers had the single largest number of self-employed workers, close to 750,000 in 2016, even though the sector overall keeps shrinking.

Self-employment rises sharply with age. On the unincorporated measure, the rate for workers 65 and older was the highest of any group at 15.5%, versus just 1.9% for those aged 16 to 24, per the BLS Spotlight on Statistics.

Two forces drive that. Older workers have had time to build the skills, clients, and capital a business needs, and self-employment offers a flexible bridge into semi-retirement. Younger workers, by contrast, overwhelmingly take wage and salary jobs first.

Men are more likely than women to work for themselves: 7.4% of employed men were unincorporated self-employed versus 5.2% of women, per the BLS. Women have been closing the gap and own a large share of the smallest businesses, 12.7 million of the 29.8 million nonemployer firms in 2022, the latest year with owner demographics.

By race and ethnicity, White workers have historically been more likely to be self-employed than Black or Hispanic workers, though minority-owned business formation has grown quickly in recent years, especially among the nonemployer firms the Census tracks.

Self-employment rates vary widely by state. On an ACS-based measure, Hawaii (10.4%), Alaska (10.3%), and Delaware (9.6%) rank highest, while large states like Florida (3.0%) and Ohio (3.2%) sit at the bottom (see the table below).

These state figures use a narrower class-of-worker definition than the national CPS rate, so the levels look lower and should be read as directional rankings rather than exact rates. Rural and tourism-heavy states tend to score higher because farming, fishing, and small tourism operators lift the self-employed share.

Self-employment income is highly unequal. IRS data for tax year 2022 show 31 million sole-proprietor returns reporting $410.7 billion in combined net income, an average near $13,250, a figure dragged down by many part-time and side-gig filers who earn very little.

At the other end, full-time independent professionals can out-earn employees: Upwork found freelance knowledge workers reported a median around $85,000 versus $80,000 for full-time staff. The gap between a hobby proprietorship and a thriving solo practice is enormous (IRS SOI, via aggregator).

The Census Bureau counted 31.99 million nonemployer businesses in 2024, firms with no paid employees, generating $1.86 trillion in receipts (Census Bureau). That is up from 29.8 million firms and $1.7 trillion (about 6.8% of the economy) in 2022 (Census Bureau). These are overwhelmingly self-employed individuals operating solo: 27.6 million were sole proprietorships.

They are also the fastest-growing part of the business population: the number of nonemployers grew faster than employer businesses in nearly every year from 2012 to 2023, and is up roughly 84% since 1997. The self-employed sit inside a broader small-business sector that the SBA credits with 43.5% of GDP.

Narrow BLS self-employment counts miss a lot of independent work. MBO Partners' 2026 report puts the full independent workforce at a record 74.9 million, up from 72.9 million in 2025, when it comprised 27.6 million full-timers, 7.9 million part-timers, and 37.4 million occasional independents who earn money irregularly (see the table below).

High earners are multiplying: almost 6 million independents now make over $100,000 (2026), after 5.6 million in 2025 and 4.7 million in 2024. Freelancers contributed an estimated $1.27 trillion in earnings to the economy in 2023, a reminder that self-employment is bigger than the headline 10% suggests.

Working for yourself means buying your own safety net. USDA ERS research found roughly 20-21% of self-employed workers were uninsured, well above the rate for employees of private firms, since there is no employer plan to fall back on.

Retirement is similar: the self-employed have no default 401(k) and must actively open a SEP-IRA, Solo 401(k), or similar. That do-it-yourself burden is the flip side of the autonomy, and a big reason independent workers who do save tend to be diligent about it.

The BLS expects self-employment to keep growing slowly. Its 2025-35 projections have the number of self-employed workers rising about 1.5% over the decade, from 9.82 million to 9.97 million, lagging the 3.6% growth expected for wage and salary employment, so the self-employed share edges down from 5.8% to 5.7% of total employment on that measure.

The composition should keep shifting toward knowledge and care work, real-estate agents, health practitioners, skilled trades, and creative professionals, while old-line self-employment in farming and retail continues to fade. The gig platforms remain a wildcard that could pull the broader independent count higher.

If you are self-employed, the financial playbook is different: income is lumpier, there is no employer match, and you carry your own health and retirement costs. That makes a cash buffer and a tax-advantaged retirement account (SEP-IRA or Solo 401(k), with far higher limits than a regular IRA) especially valuable.

It also strengthens the case for automated, low-cost, long-term investing. Without a payroll 401(k) doing it for you, building the habit of moving a set share of every payment into diversified investments is what turns irregular self-employment income into lasting wealth.