342,000 Bulgarians are self-employed with a total of 3 million and one hundred and eighty-eight thousand employed, according to the data of the European Statistical Office Eurostat for 2018. Year-on-year, those who work for themselves dropped by 7,000. A total of 32 million Europeans are self-employed.

Data on the European Union shows that an average of 14% of the total employment of people aged 15 to 74 is in the self-employed group.

For Bulgaria, the percentage is close to 11, which ranks it among the 10 member states with the least working for themselves. For comparison, the top positions are for Greece with 30% self-employed, followed by Italy, Poland and Romania by 22, 18 and 17%, respectively.

At the other end, Denmark and Luxembourg are less than 10% of total employment, and Germany and Denmark, where workers are 9% of all.

Two out of three of the self-employed or 68 percent are men.

The most popular occupations among self-employed are workers in various services and sales, craft technicians, skilled agricultural workers and others.