Independent contractor economy statistics: earnings, demographics, and sectors

Earnings

In July 2023, median usual weekly earnings for full-time independent contractors on a sole or main job were $949. The comparable median was $1,137 for full-time workers in jobs classified as not contingent and $838 for full-time contingent workers (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t11.htm).

These medians require the source definitions. They cover full-time workers on the sole or main job. BLS measures contingent status separately from alternative work arrangements, so a worker may be both contingent and an independent contractor. The contingent and not-contingent earnings columns exclude self-employed workers, while the independent-contractor column includes self-employed and wage-and-salary workers. The supported comparison is therefore limited to the three published medians and their defined populations.

A February 2026 NBER working paper by Edward Freeland, Andrew Garin, and Dmitri K. Koustas estimates that self-employed workers spent an additional 5 to 8 percentage points of gross pay on unreimbursed expenses relative to traditional employees (https://www.nber.org/papers/w34843). This is a separate survey-experiment estimate and does not adjust the July 2023 BLS weekly earnings medians.

Tax records describe annual business reporting rather than weekly worker earnings. IRS Publication 4801 estimates that 35,426,729 Schedule C schedules were filed for tax year 2023. Those schedules reported approximately $2.026 trillion in gross receipts or sales and $376.9 billion in net profit or loss (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p4801.pdf).

Publication 4801 states that its line counts and amounts are sample estimates. The unit is a filed Schedule C schedule, not a unique worker. Schedule counts can include side businesses, part-year activity, and multiple schedules associated with one taxpayer.

Demographics

Independent-contractor prevalence increased with age in July 2023. Independent contractors represented 2.2 percent of employed workers ages 16 to 24, 6.9 percent of workers ages 25 to 54, 11.5 percent of workers ages 55 and older, and 16.9 percent of workers ages 65 and older. Among the independent-contractor population itself, 36.0 percent were age 55 or older (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t05.htm, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t05a.htm).

In July 2023, 8.7 percent of employed men and 5.8 percent of employed women were independent contractors on their sole or main job. The corresponding prevalence was 7.9 percent among White workers, 7.4 percent among Hispanic or Latino workers, and 5.4 percent each among Black workers and Asian workers (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t05.htm).

BLS also reported that 84.6 percent of independent contractors on their sole or main job were self-employed in July 2023. Nearly two thirds of self-employed workers were independent contractors under the supplement's definition (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.nr0.htm).

Census NES-D measures business entities rather than workers. In reference year 2023, the United States had 30.4 million nonemployer businesses with $1.8 trillion in receipts. Women owned 12.9 million of those businesses, 42.3 percent, with $423.1 billion in receipts. Veteran-owned firms accounted for about 1.4 million businesses, 4.5 percent, with $65.7 billion in receipts (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/business-owner-characteristics.html).

The 2023 NES-D universe consists of businesses without paid employees that had at least $1,000 in annual receipts and filed federal income tax (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/abs/data/nesd.html). These are business counts and receipts, not independent-contractor worker counts.

Sectors

In July 2023, 24.2 percent of workers in the real estate and rental and leasing industry and 18.5 percent of workers in the construction industry were independent contractors on their sole or main job. By occupation, 15.1 percent of workers in construction and extraction occupations were independent contractors. Agriculture and related industries had a 12.8 percent independent-contractor share (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t06.htm, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.nr0.htm).

Census nonemployer-establishment statistics provide a different unit. Transportation and warehousing reached 1.5 million nonemployer establishments in 2015 after adding 277,383 establishments, a 22.2 percent increase from 2014. From 2022 to 2023, the sector added another 202,407 nonemployer establishments, an increase of 5.3 percent (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-84-transit-ground-transportation.html, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/07/nonemployer-business-growth.html).

The Census series counts establishments. It does not measure sole or main jobs or unique workers.

Health coverage

BLS measured health-insurance coverage in July 2023 by work arrangement. Among all employed people age 16 and older, 83.9 percent had coverage from any source and 49.9 percent had employer-provided coverage on the main job. Among contingent workers, the figures were 74.3 percent and 19.9 percent. Among temporary help agency workers, they were 60.8 percent and 16.6 percent (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t10.htm).

Among independent contractors, 74.2 percent had health insurance from any source in July 2023. BLS marks employer-provided coverage as not applicable for this row because that measure excludes independent contractors and self-employed workers. The table therefore does not support an employer-provided percentage for independent contractors (same source).

Arrangement preference

In July 2023, 80.3 percent of independent contractors on their sole or main job said they preferred their current arrangement, while 8.3 percent preferred a different arrangement. Among contingent workers, 44.8 percent preferred a different arrangement (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.t09.htm).

These are stated preferences from the BLS household supplement. They do not establish the reasons for choosing an arrangement or the quality of an individual work situation.

How broader measurement frames change the result

BLS also measured second jobs in July 2023. It counted 1.916 million independent contractors on a second job, representing 22.8 percent of multiple jobholders (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/conemp.ta.htm).

The Federal Reserve's SHED uses a broader adult-activity frame. In the 2024 survey, 20 percent of adults reported performing any gig activity during the prior month. The definition includes selling items, renting property or a vehicle, and performing short-term tasks. Within that broad gig-activity population, 96 percent usually spent less than 35 hours per week on gig activities, 70 percent spent less than 5 hours per week, and 21 percent reported gig activities as their main job (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-employment-and-gig-work.htm).

In a separate 2024 SHED chapter, 41 percent of adults who performed any gig activity during the prior month reported that their income varied at least occasionally from month to month, compared with 26 percent of adults who performed no gig activities during the prior month (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2025-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2024-income-and-expenses.htm).

The 2025 SHED report, published in May 2026, does not contain a comparable gig-activity chapter, so these figures remain labeled as 2024 measures (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2026-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2025-executive-summary.htm). Their population is the broad prior-month adult-activity frame, which differs from the BLS independent-contractor population.

Household-survey wording can also affect classification. In the Gallup Contract Work Module analyzed by Katharine G. Abraham, Brad Hershbein, Susan N. Houseman, and Beth Truesdale, among respondents who initially reported being employed by an employer, 14.8 percent of those ages 18 to 24 and 8.4 percent of those ages 25 to 54 indicated after probing that they were not an employee on at least one job. The authors interpret this pattern as independent contractors being miscoded as employees in household surveys (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30997/revisions/w30997.rev0.pdf).

Tax-record research produces another population. Collins, Garin, Jackson, Koustas, and Payne estimate that approximately 44 percent of growth in their 1099 economy from 2000 through 2016 came from people who did not file self-employment taxes (https://www.russellsage.org/sites/default/files/19rpgigworkreplacingtraditionalemployment.pdf).

GAO's December 2023 report presents federal estimates ranging from less than 5 percent to more than 30 percent of the workforce depending on the work arrangement measured, its definition, and the methodology used (https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24105651.pdf).

The 1099 worker statistics page owns the full reconciliation among the BLS, tax-filing, information-return, business-establishment, and broad gig-activity systems.

Commercial industry estimates

The figures in this section are publisher survey estimates. Their populations are broader or differently defined than the government measures above.

Upwork's July 2026 Future Workforce Index reported that 38 percent of surveyed U.S. skilled knowledge workers freelanced. The study combined a survey of 2,400 U.S.-based skilled knowledge workers with Upwork Marketplace platform data (https://investors.upwork.com/news-releases/news-release-details/upworks-future-workforce-index-2026-how-ai-redefining-value-work).

MBO Partners' 2025 State of Independence report counted 72.9 million total independents under MBO's definition, which includes full-time, part-time, and occasional independent work (https://www.mbopartners.com/state-of-independence/).

McKinsey's 2022 American Opportunity Survey reported that 36 percent of employed respondents identified as independent workers, equivalent to an extrapolated 58 million Americans under that survey's definition (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/future-of-america/freelance-side-hustles-and-gigs-many-more-americans-have-become-independent-workers).

These estimates answer publisher-specific survey questions. They are not interchangeable with BLS main-job people, IRS tax schedules, Census businesses or establishments, or SHED prior-month activities.

The key numbers