Half of the self-employed people struggled with less clients during the corona crisis. Yet this hardly leads to dissatisfaction among the small self-employed. This is apparent from an annual survey among self-employed persons by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and TNO.
Of every nine entrepreneurs, only one would rather be employed, just as much as before the corona crisis. The vast majority of respondents say they are satisfied or very satisfied. This also applies to three quarters of the entrepreneurs who struggled with less customers during the crisis.
And that while a quarter of all more than 8,000 respondents have enough reason to be dissatisfied. They rated their own financial situation as moderate or poor.
Hairdressers, cooks and artists
In particular, many self-employed hairdressers, beauticians and cooks lost a lot of work. They indicated that they had lost an average of 80 percent of their question. Creative and linguistic freelancers – such as artists, designers and linguists – lost almost three quarters.
A large part of the self-employed received support from the government, others fell off the boat. Yet another part kept their heads above water by offering different services and products than before the crisis. The survey shows that about 15 percent did the latter.
In particular, many freelancers in education and the creative sector started doing something different as entrepreneurs during the corona period. Taxi drivers, where demand also fell sharply, chose little to offer other products or services.
The vast majority of changeover switches intend to continue on their new path after the crisis.
Winners of the crisis
One in ten self-employed persons benefited from the crisis. This mainly concerns self-employed construction workers and carpenters, self-employed physicians and psychologists and IT specialists. The vast majority of these entrepreneurs rated their financial situation as (very) good.
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