Little is known about the importance of personality traits for subjective well-being

(SWB) and job satisfaction among self-employed. The aim of this article is to

investigate if the Big-Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness,

conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience) have different

relationships with SWB and job satisfaction among self-employed compared with

regular employees. Data come from a Swedish survey comprising representative

samples of self-employed (n D 2483) and regular employees (n D 2642). Personality

traits are measured using a 10-item personality measure. Our findings show that there

are only small differences, between self-employed and regular employees, in the

associations between personality traits and SWB. For job satisfaction, on the other

hand, we find much stronger relationships for self-employed than the regularly

employed. For self-employed, every personality trait except ‘openness to experience’

have a significant positive relationship with job satisfaction. In comparison, only

‘extraversion’ and ‘emotional stability’ are significantly correlated to job satisfaction

among regular employees. The relationship between ‘extraversion’ and job

satisfaction was furthermore substantially weaker among regular employees.

Therefore, being self-employed seems to be particularly beneficial for individuals

scoring high on ‘extraversion,’ ‘agreeableness,’ and ‘conscientiousness.’