Retrospective analysis of understanding the self-employment phenomenon

The attention of researchers to the phenomenon of self-employment is becoming more and more active, as the number of self-employed and the number of measures of state support for them are growing. In this regard, researchers need new adequate approaches to analyze the social and economic consequences of the acquisition of self-employed status by workers. The article analyzes the changes that have occurred in the understanding and study of self-employment in Russia, as well as the composition of the self-employed according to various criteria since the 1990s. The research has shown that the first studies focused on the search for criteria of compliance of the self-employed with the group of entrepreneurs, then - on the features that distinguish the self-employed from workers in other types of employment. In later periods, the attention of scientific teams was associated with the identification of a diverse composition of the self-employed by motivation, types of activity, formality of status and with the consideration of self-employment as an atypical form of employment, signs of its precarity. We propose to take into account the heterogeneity of the composition of self-employed and to apply different approaches when studying different groups of such workers. The narrow approach to the understanding of the self-employed as entities that independently produce goods or provide services, have neither an employer nor employees, and use property belonging to them for their activities is justified. We make proposal within the framework of a narrow approach to the phenomenon of selfemployment to apply the concept of “benchmark” self-employment or “self-employment in the proper sense of the word” to determine the form of employment of workers who meet the above criteria.