🧠 Takeaways:
▪️ Subjective well-being is highly sensitive to social protection gaps
▪️ The solo self-employed are especially vulnerable in crisis contexts
▪️ Strengthening their safety nets is essential for more resilient labor markets

👔 Job satisfaction:
🧍‍♂️ Employees: steady decline through 2023
🧑‍💼 Solo self-employed: steep drop in 2021 — but full recovery by 2022
→ Suggests resilience among the self-employed, possibly due to regained autonomy

📉 Findings – life satisfaction:
Both groups saw a decline in 2021, but:
➡️ The solo self-employed were hit earlier and harder
➡️ Their life satisfaction dropped significantly in 2020 and 2021
➡️ It recovered only partially by 2023 — still below pre-pandemic levels

📊 We use nationally representative panel data from PASS (2019–2023) and estimate fixed-effects models to track changes in Life satisfaction and Job satisfaction for solo self-employed vs. employees.

💡 Background:
The solo self-employed often report higher well-being than employees — but also face greater economic risks.
COVID-19 hit them hard: many lacked access to income replacement (like short-time work benefits) and had limited social protection.