Millions More US Workers Possibly Self-Employed Than Thought

Millions more Americans may be self-employed than previously estimated, a research paper found, and these workers are more likely to be minorities and younger.

The share of independent contractors in the labor force may be about 15% of all workers, according to the study. That’s roughly twice the typical 7% estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Comprehensive data on informal work and other side hustles have been hard to come by, especially with the rise of the gig economy.

The authors of the paper fielded a large-scale survey to find self-employed who might have been miscoded in conventional ...