The Current Status Quo

As I’m sure you are aware the UK has seen a troubling past few years under the Labour government, and nothing has been harder than the economy. With the recent UK votes we have now seen a new coalition government emerge. The result of this UK government change has been cuts. Lots of cuts. Specifically job cuts, and now more than ever people are complaining that there aren’t enough jobs to go around.

Local authorities have seen very large cuts, accounting for 145,000 out of the 240,000 roles lost in 2011 up until June.
The job cuts that have occurred in the public sector have had their impacts cushioned due to a growth of jobs in the private sector during the same period; 600,000 posts being created between December 2009 and June 2011.

Self Employment

Now more than ever is the right time in the UK to become self employed. With more and more people losing jobs to redundancy, there should be more people actively seeking self employment – taking the skill sets they have and implementing them in a self employed environment. Whether or not this is actually happening is up for debate however it IS what people should be doing.
Unfortunately I have recently heard a huge increase in people complaining that there are no jobs currently going and I have say that is totally incorrect. The UK job market, although down for the count certainly isn’t out. Not applying for jobs “because there aren’t any out there” is, put simply, a poor excuse for people who generally cannot be bothered to look and apply for them. I have always maintained if you apply for one job you have a single chance of getting one. If you apply for 100, your chance to get a job increase 100 times.

In terms of self employment, starting a business is easy, and really should be considered if you have been made recently unemployed. Find your particular skill set or sets, and roll with them. The government actively encourages self employment, and tax breaks alone can make it a hugely profitable idea, and there are further bonuses to becoming self employed such as becoming VAT registered to be able to claim back VAT costs and also company vehicles can be put through the business, making them cheaper to run.

There is no limit to what can potentially be earned by self employment. It is limited only by your will to further yourself and your business, and also by the state the market is in for your particular niche. Being self employed, you can only really earn as much (or less in realistic terms) than you make your employer – of course if this weren’t the case, it would be costing your employer to keep you.
Have you recently become self employed? We’d like to hear about it, so feel free to leave a comment below this post.