Market, state, and the quality of new self-employment jobs among men in the US and Western Germany

Recent scholarship suggests theta new form of low-quality, contingent self- employment is taking hold in postindustrial economies. Using longitudinal d ata on men fr am the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Ec onomic Panel, I find that on average men in Germany and the U.S. do not far e poorly in self-employment and in both countries a substantial number of n ew self-employment jobs offer prospects for earnings and stability that riv al the wage-and-salary sector. However, there is far more variability in th e U.S., with a higher proportion of self-employment jobs ranking among the best and the worst new jobs in the labor market. New entrepreneurs benefite d more in the U.S. than in Germany from exploiting the demand for skilled p ostindustrial services in the self-employment market At the same time, loos ely structured labor markets and weaker worker protections contributed to a larger proportion of low-paying and unstable self-employment jobs in the U .S.