SELF EMPLOYED as FEC employer text: $627.8 million

A space stored as its own FEC key

FEC employer fields are free text. SELF EMPLOYED uses a space between the two words and no hyphen. SELF-EMPLOYED, SELF, CONSULTANT, CONTRACTOR, and named shops are other stored strings. LobbyVault does not collapse them. The $627,754,974 total is only receipts grouped to this exact spaced variant.

A donor who listed a trade name, an LLC, or a client as employer sits in that other row. A donor who typed only SELF sits in the four-letter row. This guide stays on SELF EMPLOYED as indexed from FEC.gov. The file does not certify IRS Schedule C status, a contractor tax-form count, or a sole-proprietor census. Treasurers transcribe what the donor wrote, or what committee software stored; LobbyVault indexes that transcription, it does not recode it into a labor-force category.

91,203 donors and 2,133,270 lines

91,203 unique donors produced 2,133,270 SELF EMPLOYED contribution lines totaling $627,754,974. Receipts outnumber people because repeat itemized gifts are normal: several committees, several cycles, several years. The packet does not publish a mean gift or a shop-versus-freelancer split.

Party share is not on the industry headline. Independent expenditures and trade-association committee filings sit outside the $627,754,974 unless an individual receipt itself carries this employer string. Unitemized gifts never appear. State campaign reports are omitted. Size here is a filing-frequency fact: 91,203 people produced 2,133,270 itemized lines, not a measure of how many U.S. workers file as self-employed on a tax return.

Why this guide does not overlay the industry hub

Two packets can point at the same /industries/self-employed/ table. Overlay copy belongs on the hyphenated SELF-EMPLOYED spelling, which already injects lede and FAQs onto that hub. This SELF EMPLOYED guide therefore has no overlayTarget. Internal links still open the donor table for researchers comparing the space and the hyphen.

Occupation pages show titles stored beside this combo or beside a firm name. CONSULTANT and CONTRACTOR remain other keys when donors typed those words instead of SELF EMPLOYED. Named shops remain partnership or DBA keys when donors typed those names. Researchers comparing independent-worker money should open both this guide and the hyphenated overlay, then keep the two dollar totals on separate citations rather than adding them as if FEC.gov had already merged the spellings.

Nearby strings that are not this total

SELF, SELF-EMPLOYED, CONSULTANT, and CONTRACTOR describe overlapping ways filers labeled independent work. None of those words is inside $627,754,974. Adding them in a notebook is a researcher choice; it is not how FEC.gov stores the file and not how this figure was built.

A person can appear as SELF EMPLOYED on one receipt and as a client name on the next. Only the spaced lines are in this row. DBA filings at the county level will not match this FEC key automatically. Gig-platform tax forms are not this row. A no-payroll recode that wants every independent-work spelling must list SELF EMPLOYED, the hyphenated sibling, SELF, CONSULTANT, and CONTRACTOR as separate keys and say so; this page cites $627,754,974 for the spaced string only.

Donor table

The SELF EMPLOYED donor table lists disclosed names, amounts, and recipient committees. A large gift is a public individual contribution. LobbyVault does not attach a contract, a contractor tax form, or a motive to that line. The FEC field is not a Census of independent workers.

Repeat names are expected among 2,133,270 lines from 91,203 people. Follow committees on the table for party and office. This page does not assign a partisan percentage to the spaced string. People who work independently but typed a shop letterhead are not in these 91,203 unless a receipt also carried the SELF EMPLOYED grouping. The donor table is the place to inspect disclosed recipients; this guide does not rank committees or infer a business-seeking-a-contract story from a large gift.

Source

FEC.gov via LobbyVault: $627,754,974, 2,133,270 contributions, 91,203 donors, top employer SELF EMPLOYED. Coverage is itemized federal individual receipts. State filings are omitted. The ranking uses FEC employer/occupation self-reports, not NAICS.

Compare the hyphenated SELF-EMPLOYED overlay, SELF, CONSULTANT, and named shops on the industry index. Use occupation breakdowns for titles next to this string. This guide stays overlay-free so two JSON files do not compete to inject copy onto the same /industries/self-employed/ table. Cite FEC.gov via LobbyVault, not a small-business sector total.

Questions

How much have SELF EMPLOYED-listed donors given federally?

LobbyVault attributes $627,754,974 to the spaced employer string SELF EMPLOYED, from 2,133,270 contributions and 91,203 donors. These are itemized individual receipts, not a NAICS independent-contractor total and not a gig-platform PAC. Unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted. Figures are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault.

Is SELF EMPLOYED the same as SELF-EMPLOYED?

No. The space and the hyphen are separate grouped strings. The $627,754,974 total is only receipts whose employer text grouped to SELF EMPLOYED with a space. The hyphenated SELF-EMPLOYED spelling has its own page and owns the hub overlay. LobbyVault does not merge punctuation variants. Figures are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault.

Does this include consultants and contractors?

No. CONSULTANT and CONTRACTOR are separate employer strings. A receipt counted here carries the grouped text SELF EMPLOYED. People who typed a shop name or SELF sit in those other rows. Figures on this answer are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault; unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted.

How many unique donors listed SELF EMPLOYED?

The rollup counts 91,203 donors and 2,133,270 contribution lines. Repeat gifts raise the receipt count. This is not a Census of sole proprietors or a contractor tax-form headcount. Figures are limited to the FEC string as indexed on LobbyVault; unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted.