WHO BECOMES A SELF-EMPLOYED? THE CASE OF LITHUANIA

Abstract

The article is aimed to establish which form of employment – the employees or the unemployed – were more inclined to seek for self-employment in Lithuania during the period of 1998-2010. The results of the calculations revealed that there exist strong links between the number of the employees and the self-employed and the number of the unemployed and the self-employed which proposes that both forms of employment have opportunities to change their employment status and become the self-employed, creating new value and contributing to the reduction of unemployment rate as well as GDP development. Calculated values of determination coefficients propose that the number of the employees and the self-employed (R2 = 0.79) correlate stronger than the number of the unemployed and the self-employed (R2 = 0.54). In Lithuania, self-employment is treated as an alternative to escape unemployment but not as an opportunity to find new business niches or implement one’s dreams. From this point of view, Lithuania can be treated as the country where entrepreneurship is influenced by external factors (unemployment, income loss) more than by internal factors (implementation of the objectives, aims and so forth).

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.17.1.2288