Charlie Wood offers an excellent take on why now is a great time to work for yourself, from a 1997 New York Times interview with Dilbert creator Scott Adams:

…it’s a great time to be working for yourself, for one very important reason: what Scott Adams calls “boss diversification”. When you work for a company, your employer is your customer and you have only one customer for your services. Lose that customer and you’re screwed.

”The worst risk that you can face is to have one boss, somebody who can make your life miserable and then decide when it is time for you to go,” he said. ”It used to be that was the safest thing, but slowly people are realizing through downsizing that that might be the worst risk. The more customers and clients you have, the safer you are. People are going to gravitate to what is safest.”

Ironically, this is more practical than the conventional idea that a job with an employer is the safest career path.

When you work for yourself, each of your customers/clients is your boss. Lose any one of them and it’s not the end of the world. The more customers, the more diversified you are. So consulting is good, but high-volume products are better. In this economic climate, the chances of losing any one customer/boss is higher than normal. Therefore if you only have one, the risk is higher than normal that you could wake up tomorrow with none, and that’s not what you want.

In related news, BusinessWeek’s Olga Kharif writes about the Rise of the Four-Day Workweek at Pella, Dell, AK Steel, and the City of Atlanta. These organizations are reducing hours as an alternative to layoffs, which is good for you because it gives you an opportunity to start building that boss-diversified slash career.