Herb J. Schuetze
Abstract
Self employment has been rising dramatically in Canada. Among Canadians aged 25 to 54, Self employment has increased by over 70% during the period 1982 to 1995. In comparison, wage and salary employment grew by 40% over the period. Herb Schuetze, in this paper, studies the flows of men and women into and out of three states: self employment; wage and salary employment; and nonemployment. Two separate time periods are considered, the 1980s and 1990s. He finds that the increase in self employment among women is larger than that among men and that the process leading to self employment is different for the two sexes. Women seem to enter self employment directly from the other two states and tend to stay in self employment. Men, on the other hand, are first pushed out of wage and salary employment into nonemployment and from there enter self employment. This suggests that men are using self employment as "employment of last resort", whereas women are using self employment to improve their labour market outcomes.