Neither side of this entry carries a direct regret measure, so both rates are proxies. On the freelancer (action) side, Remote.com’s global survey finds that 37% of freelancers do not consider independent work more rewarding than traditional employment — the complement of the 63% who do. McKinsey’s 2022 American Opportunity Survey sets a floor under that figure: 26% freelance out of necessity rather than choice, so the true action-side proxy plausibly sits in the 26-37% band. On the employment (inaction) side, the cleanest proxy the same Remote.com survey offers is intent to switch away: 28% of current US-and-UK employees actively plan to start freelancing within five years. Wanting to leave employment for freelancing is a closer stand-in for regretting the employment choice than a general job-dissatisfaction figure, which conflates everyday grievances with career-structure regret. Drawing both headline proxies from one consistent survey also removes the earlier apples-to-oranges pairing of two different vendors’ panels.
Read as proxies, the figures lean slightly toward higher action-side regret (37%) than inaction-side intent-to-leave (28%), but the gap is small and the two constructs are not identical, so the direction is weakly held rather than a clean asymmetry. MBO Partners’ 2024 State of Independence report confirms that full-time independents report higher satisfaction than employees on 12 of 14 dimensions measured (65% of full-time independents say they feel more secure working independently), a real but incremental edge, not the 2:1 ratio previously suggested by misusing Gallup’s engagement metric. The earlier version of this entry used Gallup’s 69% employee disengagement figure as an inaction-regret proxy, which was invalid: not being “engaged” at work (a measure of daily effort and emotional connection to one’s employer) is categorically different from regretting one’s career structure.
The main interpretive hazard is construct mismatch — the revised figures still compare “finding freelancing less rewarding than employment” (action side) with “planning to switch to freelancing” (inaction side), which are related but non-identical sentiments, neither of them a verbatim regret item. Survivor bias flatters the action side: freelancers who failed and re-entered employment vanish from freelancer satisfaction panels. The most honest summary the data supports is that both arrangements leave a sizeable minority looking toward the other, with a slight tilt toward proxy regret on the freelancing side. Neither path is a clearly regret-free choice; the decision depends on individual risk tolerance, income needs, and preference for autonomy versus stability.