The proportion of self-employed worker in Korea stands at 31.3 percent, and Korea has the highest self-employment rate among OECD countries. However, self-employed workers recently suffer from financial difficulties due to sluggish domestic demand. Therefore, this report mainly focuses on analysis of ‘Economically Active Population Survey’ to find out how the status of self-employed has been changed since 1991.

  According to the analysis, there had been a drastic drop in own-account workers in age 30 to 40 during the global financial crisis. Moreover, the age of self-employed is relatively higher than that of wage workers.

  In this report, we recommended three points as future oriented policy directions. First, financial support for the self-employed should be operated after considering the policy target. Second, the training policy for the self-employed should lead transition to regular salaried employees, in order to reduce self-employment rate. Third, the social insurance system for the self-employed needs to be bolstered.