Number of US businesses with no employees (Intuit/IFTF study) (click to enlarge)

Paul Kedrosky pointed out an Intuit/IFTF study on small business (PDF) that talks about the rise of the personal business. Tim O'Reilly has a nice riff on this as well.

As I talk to people, I find more and more who consider themselves free agents and, even though they have an employer, take pains to keep themselves free of organizational entanglements. They use their own email address for most correspondence, buy their own tools, and see their employment more like a business to business relationship than a traditional employer-employee relationship.

Thomas Malone, who's been on IT Conversations several times talks about this in his book The Future of Work. It's work reading, but if you don't have the time at least listen to the talk