In view of the fact that many readers of this blog – for example legal translators, lawyers working internationally, legal interpreters, or lawyer-linguists – are self-employed, I noted with interest a recent review published by the European Commission’s Directorate-General Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion entitled Employment and Social Developments in Europe. There are some very interesting findings on self-employment and entrepreneurship, including significant changes since 2000.

I point you particularly in the direction of Chapter I.1 “Boosting job creation through self-employment and entrepreneurship”, and Chapter I.2 “Labour legislation in support of job creation”. You can download the whole 472-page report here.

For another view, the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research, supported by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, made available a 39-page report last year entitled Self-employment in Europe, that you can download here.

Looking beyond Europe, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has compiled Entrepreneurship at a Glance, published in August 2015. Its 140 pages present indicators for measuring the state of entrepreneurship, along with key facts and explanations of the policy context, with a special chapter on the international activities of SMEs. It can be found here, and is also available in French.