Définition
The self-employed are workers who are not legally subordinate to a principal and do not have an employment contract. They include both non-salaried workers and salaried managers.
Most self-employed people are considered to be non-salaried under the Social Security Code, and are therefore affiliated to a social protection scheme for non-salaried workers: traditional sole traders, micro-entrepreneurs or majority managers of limited liability companies, they are referred to as non-salaried workers.
Others are salaried managers: chairmen or managing directors of public limited companies, chairmen of simplified joint stock companies or minority managers of limited liability companies, they are ‘assimilated employees’ within the meaning of Social Security and contribute to the general scheme.
Some people affiliated to a self-employed social protection scheme are not in fact independent economically or in the sense of employment law; this is the case for entrepreneurs who are economically dependent (on a customer, an upstream organisation or an intermediary such as a digital platform). However, the latter are not identifiable among the self-employed on the basis of administrative data.