When the Jobs Aren’t There, People Create Their Own

UK job vacancies are falling sharply, particularly among the smallest businesses, while part-time self-employment has risen 15% in just two years. As traditional employment becomes less certain, the ability to generate income independently is becoming an increasingly valuable skill.

When the Jobs Aren’t There, People Create Their Own

There was an interesting set of UK employment figures released by the ONS last week. In May to July 2024, there were 867,000 job vacancies across the UK. Two years later, that figure has fallen to 707,000. That's nearly one in five vacancies gone.¹

Large company redundancies have been making headlines. But arguably, that isn't where the most striking change is happening.

Small businesses play an enormous role in the UK economy. But look specifically at businesses employing fewer than 10 people and the change is striking. The number of vacancies has dropped from 145,000 to 95,000 in the same period. That’s a drop of almost 35%.¹

Doom and gloom all round.

Or is it?

While the number of full-time self-employed people has remained largely static, the number of people who are part-time self-employed has increased substantially, from 1.4 million to 1.6 million. That's a 15% increase in just two years.² Put simply, these are people working for themselves as their main job, but they consider themselves to be working part-time.

That could be a consultant working two days a week, a tutor with their own students, a self-employed cleaner with a handful of clients, or someone running a small online business.

People still need to earn

When businesses become uncertain about the future, one of the first things they tend to do is stop recruiting. That is particularly true for very small businesses.

For a company employing five people, adding a sixth is a significant decision. If the economic outlook is uncertain, it is understandable that many businesses decide to wait.

But people often can't wait for the jobs market to improve. They still have bills and need an income. That's what makes the growth in part-time self-employment particularly interesting.

And it's only one part of the picture. It doesn't include people whose main job is traditional employment, but who also run something on the side.

There is an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps we're starting to see some of that in the labour market.

Self-employment doesn't have to mean quitting your job. One of the things I've become increasingly interested in while building FasScale is the changing definition of entrepreneurship.

We have traditionally presented starting a business as a fairly dramatic decision.

You have a job. You resign. You start a company. Suddenly you’re an entrepreneur.

But that isn't how it has to work anymore. Many people don’t have that luxury. They have responsibilities. But now, there are other options.

You can have a job and run a small business. You can freelance for a few hours each week. You can turn a skill you've developed during your career into a service. You can sell something online.

And if you've been made redundant or are between jobs, you can start generating some income yourself while continuing to look for your next role.

The barriers have changed

Starting a business twenty years ago could be complicated and expensive. You might have needed premises, specialist software, an accountant, marketing support and significant capital before you'd earned your first pound.

Technology has steadily dismantled many of those barriers and AI is accelerating that process. One person can now do things that previously required several different people or suppliers.

You can research a market, create a website, produce marketing material, manage customers, generate invoices and analyse your finances using tools that either didn't exist or would have been prohibitively expensive for a small business not that long ago.

That doesn't make building a successful business easy. You still need a good idea. You need customers. You need to understand your market. You need to price properly and you need to put the work in. But the **cost of finding out whether an idea can work** has fallen dramatically.

I think that's incredibly important.

Start with your first £100, not your first £100,000

There is also a mindset change needed.

When someone says, "I'd like to start a business", the instinct is often to think big. Everyone likes to dream. But the first question can be much smaller:

**Can I get one person to pay me for this?**

**Can I make my first £100?**

**Can I get five customers?**

**Can I do it again next month?**

That is a much less intimidating experiment than deciding whether to "become an entrepreneur".

And importantly, you can measure it.

If the idea isn't working, understand why. Change the proposition. Change the price.

Or stop and try something else.

**Failure at that scale isn't catastrophic. It's information.**

The ability to generate your own income is becoming increasingly valuable

For decades, we have been taught that employment provides security and entrepreneurship provides risk. I'm not sure the distinction is quite that simple anymore. Every wave of redundancies chips away at the long-held assumption that employment provides security.

None of this means traditional employment is disappearing. But it does mean that having the ability to generate income independently is becoming an increasingly valuable skill.

You don't necessarily need to build the next billion-pound company.

You might simply want something that generates £300 or £500 a month.

Perhaps it eventually becomes £1,000.

Perhaps it stays there.

Perhaps one day it becomes your main source of income.

The important thing is that you have created another option.

This is why we built FasScale

A big part of the thinking behind FasScale is that starting something shouldn't feel like stepping off a cliff.

We built it to make creating your own source of income something more people can realistically explore.

You should be able to take an idea, understand whether there is a market for it, work out who your customers might be, think through the economics and then decide whether it is worth pursuing.

And if it is, you should have the tools to actually run it.

As the world of work evolves, we believe there will be millions of people who sit somewhere between traditional employment and traditional entrepreneurship.

People with jobs who have a side business or people between jobs who start selling their expertise.

Parents or carers building something around family commitments.

Graduates creating opportunities rather than waiting for someone to offer them one.

The latest employment figures might be an early indication that this shift is already happening.

Full-time self-employment is broadly flat. Part-time self-employment is growing. And Britain's smallest businesses have significantly fewer vacancies than they did two years ago.

We shouldn't assume one is causing the other.

But together, they raise an interesting question about how people will earn in the future.

When businesses stop hiring, people don't stop needing opportunities.

**Increasingly, they may simply start creating their own.**

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Sources

**1.** [ONS: Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/august2026)

**2.** [ONS: LFS - Self-employed: Part-time: UK: All: Thousands: SA](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/timeseries/ycbt)