January 16th, 2015.
Self-employment Britain Combats Unemployment
Image: shimelle
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it,” said NFL Coach Lou Holtz.
And according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the reaction to 3 million unemployed UK residents in 1992 was to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance whilst striving to find another job.
But as time has progressed, the reaction has slowly but steadily shifted away from simply trying to find another job to trying to create a job through self-employment.
In fact, the ONS reported that between January and March of 2014:
• Job growth rose to a 43-year high
• Unemployment dropped a tenth of a percentage point to 6.8% – its lowest levels in 5 years
• The number of people in work rose to a record-high of 30.43 million
A key driver for the simultaneous rise in the number of people in jobs, as well as the drop in unemployment levels is self-employment. And when you consider that one in seven people in the UK is self-employed – a grand total of 4.5million people – this is not hard to visualise and be inspired by.
Guarantee Your Income
But as rosy as this picture of the economy is, it is not without its thorns.
Thorns such as ‘zero-hour contracts’ where 1.4 million people have found employment – and are technically no longer unemployed – but aren’t guaranteed work week to week.
And thorns such as the 1.29 million self-employed who are only working part-time because they are unable to generate enough income solely from working for themselves.
One of the big pains caused by these thorns for the self-employed is to do with the issue of cash flow. Generating income that is out of sync with the timing of your expenses is a huge source of stress and can be hazardous to the health of your person as well as your business.
And so as inspiring as it is to explore the opportunities afforded by self-employment, it’s important to protect yourself and your income using every means possible.
One of the ways you can do this is through invoice factoring.
The dictionary definition is: the selling of invoices to a third party to improve cash flow and reduce bad debt.
Instead of sitting around waiting for customers to pay off their invoices, a business is able to sell these invoices at a discount to a third party who will assume full responsibility for collecting on the invoices…not to mention bearing full risk should the invoice not be paid.
Discuss this with your broker to see how you can implement it. And once you do, you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that even when life’s circumstances leave you holding a pile of unpaid invoices, you don’t need to despair…you can invoice factor instead!