More own account workers in 2021, even as share of self-employed fell: MOM

THE number of own account workers - self-employed persons who are not either employers or family workers - rose for the second straight year in 2021, according to the Manpower Ministry's (MOM) annual Labour Force in Singapore report on Friday (Jan 28).

From July 2020 to June 2021, there were 248,500 people engaged in own account work as regular employment, up from 228,200 in the year-ago period.

This is in contrast to the overall share of self-employed workers, which rose at the start of the pandemic but fell in 2021. This was as "the number of salaried employees increased significantly with more job opportunities amid the economic recovery", said MOM.

The self-employed made up 13.6 per cent of resident workers in 2021, down from 14.7 per cent in 2020 and comparable with 13.5 per cent in 2019.

But as a subset of the self-employed, own account workers continued to form a larger share compared to pre-pandemic times: 9.3 per cent, compared with 9.7 per cent in 2020 and 8.8 per cent in 2019.

More than 8 in 10 regular own account workers were doing so by choice, with the top reasons cited being flexibility and freedom.

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There were some 24,100 workers regular own account workers who had that as their main job but were doing so "on a non-preferred basis". Though this was down from 32,000 in 2020, MOM noted that "some vulnerability remains" as it is still higher than the pre-pandemic figures, with 19,600 in 2019 and 14,800 in 2018. (see amendment note)

The pandemic has also changed demand for different forms of own account work. The default work-from-home stance caused demand for point-to-point transport to fall, resulting in fewer private-hire car drives and taxi drivers - though these were still the top 2 occupations, at 26,900 and 24,300 workers respectively.

With the surge in e-commerce and delivery services, the number of delivery workers continued to rise, to 16,400. In 2021, they overtook real estate agents as the fourth most common occupation among own account workers.

About 3 in 10 regular own account workers are platform workers, who rely on transport and delivery service matching platforms.

There were 73,200 such workers in 2021, down from 77,400 in 2020, due to fewer workers who were doing so against their preferences.

More than half of such workers are aged 50 and over, and more than half have their highest educational qualification at the secondary level or lower.

Amendment note: An earlier version of the story cited 21,400 own account workers who were doing so on a non-preferred basis. The figure refers to primary regular own account workers doing so on such a basis.