Here is a New York Times article by Substance of Style author Virginia Postrel on the rise of the aesthetic economy.

Quote:

The official job counters at the Bureau of Labor Statistics don't do much to overcome our blind spots. The bureau is good at counting people who work for large organizations in well-defined, long-established occupations. It is much less adept at counting employees in small businesses, simply because there are too many small enterprises to representatively sample them. The bureau's occupational survey, which might suggest which jobs are growing, doesn't count self-employed people or partners in unincorporated businesses at all. And many of today's growing industries, the ones adding jobs even amid the recession, are comprised largely of small companies and self-employed individuals. That is particularly true for aesthetic crafts, from graphic designers and cosmetic dentists to gardeners. These specialists' skills are in ever greater demand, yet they tend to work for themselves or in partnerships.

So read this blog regularly, and make yourself more employable.

Personally I prefer a world in which the government doesn't spend its time counting people, or come to that doing anything very much. To make her point, Postrel sounds like she'd actually like her government to go snooping around among the ranks of the self-employed, aesthetic and of every other sort. That aside, the point she makes is a good one.