评论
打印
Buttonwood
梧桐树
On their own
自力更生
What explains the surge in self-employment?
是什么样的因素导致了自我雇佣现象激增呢？
PERHAPS the future belongs to the self-employed. Steady jobs, after all, are hard to find. The idea that a young graduate should expect to work for 40 years with the same employer until retirement seems quaintly dated.
或许，未来就是自我雇佣者的天地。毕竟，稳定的工作是很难找的。寄希望于一名年轻的毕业生只为一个雇主工作四十年直到退休，这样的想法是真的过时了。
There has been a structural shift towards self-employment on both sides of the Atlantic as well as a cyclical one. In the fourth quarter of 2013, 90% of the new jobs created in Britain were classed as self-employment. Is the shift a sign of a thriving entrepreneurial spirit or an indicator of desperation? Are we talking Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook or Walter White and “Breaking Bad”?
在大西洋的东西两岸，自我雇佣的情况均发生了结构性的转变，并且这种变化是周期性的。2013年的第四季度中，英国90%的新工作岗位是被归为自我雇佣类。这样的转变到底意味着一次创业精神的繁荣成长，还是预示着社会绝望感的产生呢？我们现在所面临的情况到底是马克·扎克伯格与他的网络帝国Facebook，还是沃尔特·怀特与“绝命毒师”呢？
Answering the question is made harder by the limitations of the data, drawn as they are from a combination of surveys, tax records and registers of company creation. Some people may incorporate as a business in order to reduce their tax bill; others may fail to report their self-employment income as a way of avoiding taxes. Some may play dual roles, having a full-time job but earning money on the side. Still others may be working for their old employer as contractors, rather than for a salary.
基于数据的局限性，我们更加难以回答上述问题。前者通常是由问卷调查、缴税记录和公司注册资料所构成的。一些人或许只是为了减少应交税费而联合成立公司；另一些人或许没有报告登记自己的自我雇佣业务收入以逃避税负。部分人或许同时扮演着两种角色，既是一位有全职工作的人，同时也在其他方面赚取外快。还有其他一些人正在为自己的老雇主做事，但并不是以雇员的形式，而是以合约承包商的身份来工作。
Desperation must play a part. A paper by Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz found a close link between the unemployment rate in a given American locality and the rate of new business startups. A survey by the Kauffman Foundation found that the rate of new-business creation in America declined last year, even as the economy turned up; as the report comments, there was “less pressure on individuals to start businesses out of necessity”.
绝望感肯定是其中一个原因。来自加州大学圣克鲁兹分校的罗伯特·费尔利的论文发现了在给定美国的地点关于失业率和新公司成立的比率的密切联系。一份来自考夫曼基金会的调查结果显示，就算在经济复苏的环境下，去年美国新公司成立的比率出现下降的情况。正如报告里所评论的一样，“人们不太会觉得有创业的必要性”。
Self-employment may be more socially acceptable than it used to be. Middle-class people can call themselves consultants or freelancers, rather than unemployed. The businesses they create are unlikely to be the growth engines of the future. In Britain, by far the fastest growth in recent years has been in businesses that are one-man bands.
目前自我雇佣要比从前更容易被社会所接纳。中产阶级的人们能够称自己为咨询顾问或者自由工作者而不是失业者。这样的事业不太可能成为未来经济增长的引擎。在英国，近几年来增长最快的部门是在一人独立公司。
The numbers also show self-employed Britons tend to be male, work longer hours than salaried employees and earn less. Indeed, the real wages of the self-employed fell faster than those in contractual employment between 2007 and 2012. This may help to explain why British productivity has grown only sluggishly in recent years. Setting up a new business involves a lot of time tracking down new clients or handling a host of issues that were previously dealt with by a company.
数字还显示出自我雇佣的英国人大多为男性，工作的时间比全职工作的员工长而且赚得少。确实，2007年至2012年间，自我雇佣人的真实薪水要比合同制员工下降得更快。这或许能解释为何英国近几年的生产率只提高了一丁点。开创一个新的事业需要花费大量的时间去构建新的客户网以及处理一堆事务，而这些事务本来是由公司去处理的。
The new self-employed are also older. British people aged 50 and above comprised five-sixths of the increase in the category between 2008 and 2012. And there has been a rise of 160,000 in the number of self-employed people aged 65 and over since 2007. Some of that may reflect the need to replace shortfalls in pension income.
此外，新晋自我雇佣的人们通常是年龄比较大的。英国50岁及以上的人在2008年至2012年间，构成了六分之五新增的自我雇佣人口。与此同时，自2007年起有160000位年龄在65及以上的人进入到自我雇佣的领域。上述的情况也许反映了退休金短缺所带来的工作需求。
But these changes are not all negative. The rise of the service economy means it is easier for people aged 65 and over to find jobs that suit them; retirees are fitter than they would have been 40 years ago, when many had been through a long career in manual labour. Getting people to work for longer is the best way of dealing with the costs of an ageing population. In addition, a survey by the Royal Society of Arts suggests that the self-employed are happier than those in paid employment—independence counts for a lot, as does the feeling that one's work has meaning.
但这些转变带来的并不全是负面影响。服务业经济的增长意味着年龄在65及以上的人更容易找到一份适合的工作；当退休人员已经进行了很长时间的体力劳动工作，他们现在要比40年前更适合从事服务业工作。让人们工作的时间延长，是应对人口老龄化所带来的社会福利成本问题的最好方法。除此之外，一份由皇家艺术学会所进行的调查显示，自我雇佣人员要比全职上班的人更加开心-独立所带来的影响是深远的，正如一个人认为工作是有意义时所带来的感受一样。
In the long run, this rise in self-employment will raise some interesting macroeconomic and political questions. Does it mean, as Morgan Stanley suggests in a research note, that the labour market is not as robust as it appears; that many people have been forced into self-employment and will happily take a paid job if offered one? That would imply there is still plenty of slack in the labour market and monetary policy can stay looser for longer.
长远来看，在自我雇佣领域的增长会引起一些有趣的宏观经济和政治问题。正如摩根士丹利的一份研究报告所提到的，上述的增长是否意味着劳动力市场并不像其显示出的一样强健；如果被迫进入自我雇佣境地的人们得到一份全职工作，是否会很开心地选择后者呢？这些问题的肯定将会显示出劳动力市场依旧处于一个低迷时期，并且货币政策可以继续在更长的时间里保持更为宽松的状态。
But perhaps the structural trend means those paid jobs will not become available. If so, the economy may have created a vast reserve labour force, akin to the “spinsters” of early 19th-century Britain—single women who were paid piece rates for spinning textiles at home—or the dockers who used to mass outside port gates in the hope of being selected for a day's work. That would suggest an economy where wages are permanently kept under pressure and where profit margins remain high. Good news for the stockmarket perhaps, but not so good for the self-employed.
但也许这一结构性的趋势意味着全职工作岗位不会出现空缺。如果真的如此，那经济体或许已经制造了大量的劳动力储备，类似于19世纪早期英国的“老姑娘”—单身女人在家进行纺织品制造而获得计件工资---或者是码头工人们拥堵在港口大门处等待被挑选进入工作。这表示经济体当中工资水平长期保持在高度压榨的水平，同时利润空间依然巨大。这对股市来说或许是好消息，但对自我雇佣者来说可就不是那么回事了。
