Remember all those books and reports about “the future of work”? Well, the future seems to have arrived.

A new report from Orange called The way to work states that, of 28.5 million UK workers, 3.64 million (13%) are self employed, 7 million (24%) are part-time workers, 7% are freelance workers, and 11% are in businesses with no employees.

Otherwise stated: 55% of the UK workforce does not have a job in the traditional sense of the word.

The report does not mention the hundreds of millions of hours of unpaid, uncounted work done by parents and care givers.

If their work were included in the total, the number of job-less workers would be nearer 80% of the total. Now there’s a thought.