The rise of necessity entrepreneurs?

December saw 62,000 new jobs, taking the jobless rate to a 30-year low.

Ahem. Who was it that defied just about every analyst that said the labour market would fall in Q4? I believe it was me. But perhaps I was just lucky. Anyway, I didn’t see it all coming...

Self employment is booming. BMO economist Douglas Porter says December’s job gains were spread across all sectors, except construction was up only slightly. Is there any good reason why all these people with jobs wouldn’t pump up residential construction? Perhaps, if they didn’t have the right jobs. The Globe and Mail reported today that 49,000 of the positions were characterized as self employed.

This reminds me of a previous post where I explored three reasons why individuals might become self employed:

a) self employment is a stepping stone to other work

b) self employment is a stepping stone to retirement

c) self employment persists in periods of poor job growth

As hiring slows down, it might be the case that a) and c) are coming true. Perhaps self employment really is an innate survival skill. I’ll return to this topic at some point.

Also, I haven’t forgotten about my last post on the construction sector. I’ll continue with that tomorrow. Or something.