This could be the year when the number of Britain's self-employed climbs above four million. Final figures for 2006 showed 3.97 million working for themselves—a rise of nearly half a million since the start of the millennium.

Why are so many quitting the corporate world and going it alone? "There's a simple emotional factor to working for yourself," says The Work Foundation's Stephen Overell.

"It has an immense appeal to people and at certain points in their lives, they may feel more confident about going freelance than others—if they've got friends who've done it successfully or if they've got equity in their house which can be used to start their own business."

New freelancers will join a buoyant market for self-employed services. Duncan Taylor, managing director of people4business, who researched freelance services when setting up his company's self-employment website, says close to 90 per cent of UK companies hire contractors at some time or other.

"It's an economic strength for Britain because it gives businesses the opportunity to flex their most expensive resource—people—in line with the demand for their products and services," he says. "In the UK, self-employment is very much a win-win situation for freelancers and the companies that hire them."

But anybody thinking that self-employment offers an easy alternative to life in the corporate bubble will soon be disabused. "If you're self-employed you have to be a lot more flexible than if you work for an organisation," says Overell.

Les Graney was a high-flying IT executive at organisations including pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Royal Mail Group before he went solo. "My plan was to have a portfolio of work, which would be part-time, and where the peaks and troughs would balance themselves out over time," he recalls. He marketed himself through his own company, Holly Tree Associates, soon after becoming self-employed.

"I'd been working 110 per cent at the Royal Mail and within a few months I was working 120 per cent," he says. It took a couple of years before Graney could iron out those peaks and troughs. Now he's created a portfolio of activities which includes an agency of central government consultants—using other former employees who've struck out on their own.

"I decided I didn't want to be an employee again-and I didn't want to be an employer. The agency brings consultants together when a job's to be done—and then we disperse when it's over."

Being your own boss is attractive, but there are downsides. "It can be a feast or famine situation," warns Taylor. "You could earn quite a lot for a while but then find you've got no work because you haven't had time to find the next contract."

Getting paid on time is another bugbear, but few use the 1998 Late Payment law for fear of annoying their clients. Even so, the steady growth in freelancing suggests there might be more "wage slaves" out there eager to go it alone, changing the business landscape as they do so.