Every year, we run a survey to understand the mental health of freelancers.
This annual study is designed to identify the major issues and gaps in support which freelancers face, so that the support ecosystem can better respond to those needs, so that individual freelancers can be better aware of what issues they might face, and so that government and policy markers have better visibility of the issues which affect freelancers.
In 2024, 715 freelancers shared data about their work, their mental health, and their experiences in self-employment.
Summarising the most important data, to understand a picture of freelancing and mental health during 2024.
45% saw their mental health decline in 2024. This is a hugely significant proportion of the group - and due to a wide set of contributing factors, not least increased cost of living, global conflict, and ongoing challenges finding work.
31% were unable to work for 3 or more days during the year due to poor mental health. Two-thirds of the group felt less able to work due to poor mental health at some point during the year, affecting productivity and income.
71.9% of our group felt isolated or lonely sometimes or frequently during 2024 - highlighting the importance of support networks, communities and connection for the self-employed. Whilst the UK is facing an epidemic of loneliness, freelancers and the self-employed seem disproportionately affected. 33% of our group reported feeling this way frequently - 3x higher than national average.
70% of freelancers don't feel they have adequate support for their mental health at work, and a similar amount don't know where they would turn to find support. A significant gap in support and awareness of support continues to exist for the self-employed, suggesting the ecosystem is not doing a good enough job of signposting to good quality resources.
Almost one-third of our group stated they hadn't chosen to work as a freelancer - but found themselves in self-employment due to circumstances outside of their control. This group of 'forced freelancers' is a symptom of large numbers of redundancies, as well as employment still not being supportive of large portions of society - such as carers, neurodiverse and disabled workers.
36% took less than 14 days of voluntary leave during the year, and 32% felt additional stress or negative impact to their mental health by taking time off. Freelancers don't have paid time off - and in a challenging commercial year, choosing not to work is a luxury for many.
72% of our group experienced ghosting this year - which seems to be on the rise. The phenomenon of clients disappearing at any stage of the process, including during a project, and after an invoice has been raised, is a major issue for freelancers - and 60% say this is negatively affecting their mental health.
71% of our group experienced late payments, and had to spend time chasing late payments. This continues to be a major issue for freelancers, and not enough work is being done to tackle the problem, a policy or education level - 55% said this had a negative impact on their mental health.
72% experienced stress from cancelled or delayed projects during 2024. Breadcrumbing, last minute cancellations and contracts being cut short are affecting a large portion of freelancers - 83.7% feel their clients are poor at communicating.
90% experienced feelings of low confidence at some point in 2024 - dispelling the idea of 'imposter syndrome' entirely, and simply highlighting this being part of the human condition. Lack of confidence in freelancing, combined with high portions of feelings of isolation, can lead to significant impacts on mental health - 44.2% felt it significantly affected their mental health at some point during 2024.
81.6% did not feel generally supported by government. Multiple changes in government, policy and ongoing challenges faced by small businesses have led to a significant feeling of lack of support from government by freelancers.
We are not seeing any improvement, over the six years of doing this research work, of levels of support for the mental health of freelancers - despite increased visibility of the topic, and more insight into where the challenges lie.
Who took part in the study?
We asked a series of questions to understand the demographics of our respondents. This data helps us to identify if there are any major differences between major groups within the study, i.e. do those ealier in their careers have different experiences to those who are later in their careers?
Our group skews towards people with more years of experience in work - suggesting that freelancing is more common amongst those with some years of experience in work.
This makes sense - as many will moving into freelancing after some years of experience in work, as jumping straight into self-employment without any career experience can be more challenging.
More than half of our group have been working for 4+ years in self-employment - and around 37% of have been working for less than 4 years.
21% of our group are new to self-employment (i.e within the new two years).
Our group is heavily skewed towards female respondents - with only 31.4% of our group identifying as male.
Whilst this is counter to the general freelancing population, which skews in the opposite direction: 61% male to 39% female (IPSE, 2023), this is a fairly consistent skew for our research group over the years, suggesting that men are less likely to be talking about their mental health - which aligns with broader research on this topic.
Our focus group is primarily based in the UK, with some respondents from other locations across the world.
Whislt we’ve generally focused on all responses, some data filters out non-UK respondents where the question is not relevant (i.e. IR35, government policy, etc).
The majority of our group is working in creative and related industries, such as design, copywriting, and marketing. This reflects the dominant roles in UK freelancing at larger.
In 2023, the most common occupation for freelance workers in the United Kingdom was in the artistic, literary and media sector at 318,000 workers, followed by teaching profressionals. Freelancers make up around 32% of the creative industries (DMCS, 2023).
We asked a series of questions to understand how much time is being spent freelancing.
This is to understand the difference between (and perhaps dispel the myth) freelancing vs. “side hustles”, and see how much time is being comitted to working in this fashion.
We also asked about how much time was taken off, or if individuals were unable to work at any time during the period, and their reasons for becoming self-employed.
The majority of our group takes their primary source of income from self-employment in 2024.
For those who said it was not their primary source of income, most explained that they had a partial year in self-employment, or combined PAYE with self-employment (i.e. inside IR35), which is a common scenario for many freelancers. Some explained they had other sources of household income, such as a partner.
Some (but very few) individuals were freelancing on the side to another form of work, such as employment.
The majority of our group committed to self-employment for 5 days a week, a fairly standard working week - across employment and self-employment.
10% of our group were making themselves available for more than five days a week.
22.6% were working four days a week. According to recent data, only 1.6% of perm jobs are offering 4 days a week - so self-employment seems to offer more more flexibility in terms of working hours in comparison to employment.
A small percentage around 5% are working less than three days a week, aligning with the number of people who stated they were not generating the primary source of income from self-employment.
86.98% of our group are committing between 4-10 hours a day towards self-employment, with almost half of the group doing a fairly stardard ‘7.5 hour day’.
Combining this is the days a week being worked - self-employment seems to be not radically different to the classic 9-5 job in the way many are working.
However, 30% of freelancers do seem to be working longer hours than an average 9-5 employee, perhaps dispelling the myth that freelancers work fewer hours.
38.6% of freelancers are voluntarily taking off between 14-28 days a year.
In the UK, full-timeemployees are entitled to 28 days of paid annual leave per year, as mandated by the Working Time Regulations 1998.
Freelancers, however, do not receive pay for any time taken off.
24.19% of freelancers are taking off more than the mandatory 28 days of annual leave which employees are entitled to - however, 36.48% are taking off less than 14 days of voluntary leave during the year.
8% are not taking off any time at all.
We asked a series of questions about how and why they joined self-employment
There is lots of existing data on the motivations for entering self-employment, but less on expectations and experiences around mental health - and as mental health is increasingly a driver for people entering self-employment, we wanted to understand more about whether it delivers on the promise.
Almost one-third of our group stated they didn’t choose work in self-employment - and found themselves in self-employment due to circumstances outside of their control.
These reasons include being unable to find employment which suits their needs, roles being made redundant, being forced to work by a hirer under a self-employment contract, or working in freelancing temporarily to support their income.
This dispels a myth that freelancing is a choice - and for many it was a necessity.
However, even within the group who explained they didn’t choose to work in self-employment, a little over half still feel they are happy to be working this way.
More research into those who feel forced into self-employment is needed.
As we see most years, a desire for flexibilty and control over work is still the most common reason for becoming self-employed.
35% however stated improved mental health was a driver for becoming self-employed, suggesting poor support for mental health in employment is still a major issue.
Working around caring responsibilities was a driver for almost a quarter of the group, and being unable to find permanent work was a reason for 23% of the group - a significant proportion, not choosing to work for themselves, but finding it neccessary.
6% of our group mentioned working with a disability as the reason for becoming self-employed - UK Government data shows that around 13% of the self-employed are registered disabled, and those registered disabled are more likely to be in self-employment than those who are not disabled. This is an area we’d like to explore further.
The remaining 12% not represented in the chart above lists a long tail of reasons, including: roles being made redundant, spending more time with family, and many stated reasons around employed roles not supporting them or being accessible to them, such as introversion, ethnicity, gender, and neurodiversity.
Also, a good proportion mentioned a desire for variety.
50% of our group stated they had caring responsibilities - whether this is children, relatives or other demands.
This places significant additional pressures on those who are self-employed.
But also is often a major contributing factor towards becoming self-employed, to find more flexiblity around their caring responsibilities.
The 2021 Census estimated that there were 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK.
62% of the group expected to see mental health improvements from working in self-employment.
That’s a significant expectation, and perhaps speaks more to the negative impact that employment can have on mental health, than perhaps the benefits of self-employment.
20% didn’t expect any improvements, and 18% didn’t consider the impact of self-employment on their mental health.
7% felt they thought it would have a negative impact.
61% of the group say they feel their mental health has, on average, improved since becoming self-employed. 26% say it has declined since becoming self-employed.
Notably, there is no real difference between those who have been self-employed for 2+ years and those who are new to freelancing - suggesting that the impact of freelancing on mental health has not significantly changed over the years, nor does longer periods of time freelancing have a bearing either way.
New freelancers report a marginally higher (9%) improvement in mental health.
Of the freelancers who expected to see improvements in their mental health, 75% did see improvements.
Of the freelancers who expected to see a decline, 67% saw a decline.
We asked a series of questions specifically about individuals wellbeing during 2024 - to capture a snapshot of how freelancers were feeling.
28% of the group felt their mental health was poor in 2024. 31.8% felt their sleep health was poor in the last 12 months. 41.4% felt their financial wellbeing was poor over the past year.
45.4% of our group saw their mental health decline during 2024, almost half of the group.
Only 10% of freelancers had no incidences of stress, anxiety or poor mental health having a negative impact on their ability to work effectively during 2024.
Two thirds of freelancers felt that stress, anxiety or poor mental health got in their way of being able to work effectively at some point more than once during the year.
This is not significantly higher than reported numbers for employees who report poorer productivity due to stress, however, freelancers don’t have the same level of support from peers, managers or HR departments - and are less able to take time off work to recover.
50% of our group were, at some point during 2024, unable to work due to poor mental health. 31% were unable to work for 3 or more days during the year.
Self-employed individuals generally do not have access to paid sick leave or statuatory sick pay, but beyond this, being unable to work can lead to further mental health challenges, due to increased stress around income, creating a downward spiral, especially for those who are unable to work for longer periods of time.
According to HSE, in 2023/24, across the UK workforce, people took an average of 15.5 days off work due to stress, depression, or anxiety. On average, the self-employed are taking fewer days off work due to stress, depression, or anxiety.
Whilst only a marginally higher percentage of people were prevented from working due to poor physical health during 2024, the fact that roughly the same number of people were unable to work due to poor physical health as poor mental health is a cause for concern.
Whilst we can protect ourselves somewhat from colds and viruses, mental health issues can be harder to avoid - especially when so many factors our outside of our control.
Both of these questions, however, highlight the importance for freelancers to prepare for unexpected off during the working year, as it’s more than likely to affect you.
We took a deeper look into the influencing factors which contribute towards causing stress, anxiety and poorer mental health.
We asked our freelancers whether they had experienced and been negatively impacted by the following factors during 2024.
Cost of Living: The cost of living crisis, was by far, the most significant macro factor in 2024, and caused a negative impact on 86% of our group - both the highest significant factor, factor with any level of contribution.
Increased cost of living has a direct impact not only on income, but also the level of work required to maintain it, leading to additional stress and concern.
In addition to the cost of living crisis, 2024 saw a downturn in demand - doubling the concern for many: higher bills, less work, less income, and less spending power due to inflation.
Global Conflict and Climate Emergency: The second and third ranked macro-factor were ongoing global conflicts, including Ukraine and Gaza, along with broader tensions in Europe with Russia; and concerns over the climate emergency.
Whilst not directly related to work, the continual coverage of conflict in the news and social media can, for many, feel overwhelming. Research that continued exposure to distressing news has demonstrable negative effects on mental health.
Likewise, anxieties over the climate emergency can lead to a sense of helplessness - and for many, very direct impact of the crisis can affect businesses too - in terms of floods and storms across the UK and other regions.
Impact of Brexit: The lasting impact of leaving the European Union continues to have a negative impact on the mental health of small business owners, many of whom have been left unable to trade with our closest neighbors.
In this section, we ask respondents to select any of the factors which they have experienced, and felt had a negative impact on their stress, anxiety or mental health.
The tables below show the following:
An additional table of all factors is provided at the end of the report.
Do you feel supported or know where to get support?
We asked our respondents whether they feel adequate support for their mental health, or know where to find support for their mental health.
This is a key question we’ve asked every year in our research, to track whether the mental health landscape is improving for freelancers.
Almost three-quarters (71%) of our group do not feel they have adequate support for their mental health within the context of work.
This number is higher than in previous years (63% in 2022, 67% in 2021, 68% in 2020, 60% in 2019).
Those who who have joined self-employment in the last two years are 10% more likely to feel they have adequate support for their mental health within the context of work - which might suggest those new to freelancing are more invested in their mental health.
A similar number to those who didn’t feel they had adequate support for their mental health within the context of work, 70% of our group do not feel like they know where they’d be able to get support for their mental health at work.
The number for new freelancers is not significantly different to the overall number of individuals who aren’t sure where to find support.
This is still a significantly high number, and has been roughly consistent since our first study in 2019.
Positively, 68% of our group felt generally supported by their peers in self-employment during 2024. This shows the positive impact of community and support networks on mental health.
ALmost 40% of our group felt unsupported by their clients in self-employment during 2024 - and only 15% felt well supported by their clients.
As we can see a direct relationship between poorer mental health and the ability to work and be productive - supporting freelancers to work well is in everyone’s interest.
We’d love to see more clients offering support and signposting to their freelancers, to support their positive mental health and productivity.
Around 82% of freelancers did not feel supported by the government in self-employment during 2024 - which is a significant number of individuals who feel let down and lacking in support.
We’d love to see more explicit support for self-employed workers in the UK, and in particular policy changes which recognise the unique challenges of self-employment.
90% of our group felt isolated, disconnected or lonely as a self-employed professional during 2024.
Only 10% didn’t feel, at some point, this way.
This is a hugely significant number.
Based upon British Red Cross data, around 10-11% of people in the workforce report feeling lonely at work often or always.
For the self-employed, based upon our data - this number of almost three times higher.
Do you feel optimistic about the future of freelancing looking into 2025 and beyond?
We asked our respondents about their optimism for the years ahead, in the context of the last 12 months being one of the hardest years for many freelancers.
Our group was split across how they felt about 2024 - 53.5% said it was a bad year, with 14.5% experiencing their worst year in self-employment, and only 21% have a significantly positive year.
Sentiment from across our communities was poor for 2024 too - with many reporting long periods out of work, with people struggling to find work across the spectrum of experience and industries.
More than half of our group considered leaving self-employment during 2025.
This number might actually be higher across the total population, as we only polled individuals who are currently self-employed.
68% of our group still feel that self-employment is a sustainable way of working for them, however over a third no longer feel that freelancing is sustainable - which is a significant proportion.
Of the group who did not choose to work in self-employment, xxxxx
Our group do not feel overly optimistic about 2025 - only 27.4% feel actively positive about 2025, and around a quarter feel actively negative about freelancing in 2025.
50% are really hedging their bets, and feel neither overly positive nor negative - demonstrating how hard it can be to predict what freelancing might be like, year to year.
2024 was one of the hardest years in freelancing for many.
We saw a challenging commercial market, high numbers of people finding themselves in freelancing not by choice, but by circumstance, and contracts being hard to find and lower value.
Day rates have stagnated over the last five years across many sectors, despite inflation, mortgage rates and general costs of living increasing, combined with freelancing being more accessible than ever globally, leading to potential increased competition and depressed day rates.
Awareness of mental health within self-employment has improved - over the last five years of research and work in this space, we’re seeing more communities, more platforms and more conversations around mental health in freelancing, and more and more people are turning to self-employment to look for improvements in their wellbeing.
However, the uncertain nature of freelancing, combined with poor awareness and access to support resources and programmes, and issues of isolation where freelancers are not actively investing in building their own support structures, means freelancing can have a dramatic effect on many.
Overall, most freelancers report improved mental health when they move into self-employment - this is fantastic, but perhaps speaks more to how much of a negative impact poor experiences in employment have on so many.
However, for the 38% who feel their mental health has declined overall, and for the 70% who feel they don’t have adequate support for their mental health in freelancing - much needs to be done to improve things.
With a population of almost 5 million in self-employment in the UK, to neglect the impact of lack of adequate awareness, support and quality of mental health for around 13% of the workforce is unacceptable.
1/ Be aware of the importance of mental health on your wellbeing and business - don’t neglect it until it becomes an issue you need to address. Use resources from projects like Freelancing.Support and Leapers to understand mental health and freelancing.
2/ Invest in active awareness of your own wellbeing - spend a minumum of 15 minutes a week reflecting on how your week was, and the causes of those feelings. Over time, you’ll understand the contributing factors towards your own mental health.
3/ Make small improvements towards better behaviours - identify things you’d like to put in place to support yourself, and work towards building good boundaries and mitigations where possible.
4/ Build out your own support networks and structures - invest in making connections and joining communities to ensure you people you can turn to, when things are harder.
Subscribe to the freelancing.support mailing list to access resources and support to build positive mental health in freelancing.
1/ Play your part in supporting your freelancers mental health, through awareness and signposting - commit to building awareness of the importance of mental health for your freelancers, and link to good quality resources, such as Freelancing.Support and Leapers, or develop your own resources in partnership with reputable organisations, based data and upon evidence-based solutions.
2/ Identify the areas and factors which you can affect positive change - your organisation will have a specialism in a particular area, focus on developing strong support in that domain, i.e. if you’re an accounting platform, focus on improving financial literacy and wellbeing. Make more noise about the topics affecting your freelancers, in the areas you want to see change.
3/ Collaborate with the rest of the support ecosystem - create partnerships and collaborate with organisations and others in the space to provide support and improve the landscape for freelancers. Aim not to replicate or duplicate existing resources, but rather support and signpost to fellow projects, so your freelancers can access the best possible support.
Recognise that investing in their wellbeing in investing in your own commercial success - helping your freelancers to grow their businesses ultimately helps you to grow your business, making supporting your freelancers a smart business investment, not just an SEO or content strategy.
Join our collective of organisations to help make a difference.
1/ Play your part in supporting your freelancers, through awareness and signposting - commit to building awareness of the importance of mental health for your freelancers, and link to good quality resources, such as Freelancing.Support and Leapers.
Ensure your freelancers have access to resources via your onboarding process, and be proactive in providing support.
Identify a responsible person to develop a strategy for supporting your freelancers.
Don’t aim to create your own resources, but rather partner with existing projects and organisations who provide support.
2/ Identify damaging behaviours which you can improve upon - use this research, or your own feedback from your freelancers, on where there are pain points and behaviours you might be demonstrating which are damaging to your freelancers wellbeing, such as late payments or poor communication.
Make a plan to improve these areas. Work with organisations like Leapers to implement the Freelance Friendly framework.
3/ Recognise that positive mental health means improved productivity and ROI for your business - poorer mental health means poorer productivity and quality of work, and supporting your freelancers leads to better outcomes for all. There is a direct ROI on supporting your freelancers’ wellbeing.
Contact us to explore positive ways to support your freelancers.
1/ Drive awareness and provide signposting to support from gov.uk and HMRC - as the only point on the journey which every single self-employed individual passes through, the opportunity to drive awareness and provide signposting to support from gov.uk and HMRC is significant.
Improving mental health outcomes has a positive impact on the economy, sustainability of small businesses, and tax revenues.
2/ Include freelancers in policy decisions around sustainable working practises - recognise that self-employed face unique challenges which employees don’t, and face lack of support around sick pay, work related mental health support, resources and tools.
Include freelancers and individuals in policy discovery and development processes. Ensure freelancers are included in any reporting and research projects around employment and menta health.
Develop policies which encourage hirers to better support freelancers, such as stronger penalties for late payments, and requirements for mandatory and transparent contracts.
3/ Incentivise investment in mental health for individuals, platforms and hirers - support the support ecosystem to provide resources for freelancers. Invest in programmes to rebuild small business support, give equal prioritisation to mental health initatives, not just business growth programmes.
Work with us to better understand freelancers needs.
Additional information related to the research and findings.
This research was conducted through an online survey distributed between November 1st 2024 - December 31st, 2024. The survey collected quantitative data from 715 freelance professionals across multiple industries.
Please, when citing the research, use the following:
“Leapers, 2024. Mental Health and Freelancing 2024. Available at: https://leapers.co/research/”
If you have any questions or need further information, please contact us at:
