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.’