Statistics Canada just released the results of a survey on self-employment in the recent recession – apparently there was an increase of people who are self-employed by over 4.3% between October 2008 and October 2009.
Surprisingly, this is not solely a result of people being laid off, as paid employment fell by 3.3%. As well, most of those who were laid off were originally working in the manufacturing industry, whereas those who are now self employed are in the services industries.
Another interesting thing to note is that those who were involved in the growth in self-employment were mostly women (58%), even though it was mostly men who were self-employed before October 2008.