Marcelle Bagu's earnings as a self-employed carpenter are "quadruple" what she ever made as an employee working as a political adviser to the Victorian government.

But Bagu's experience contrasts with research from the National Institute of Labour Studies and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research published in the most recent edition of the Australian Journal of Labour Economics.

Marcelle Bagu earns more as a self-employed tradie than she did as a political adviser. Credit:Eddie Jim

Authors Tom Karmel and Ben Braysher say it's popular wisdom that tradies "do pretty well" and in some cases earn more than those with degrees, but on the whole employees have higher incomes than the self-employed.

Karmel and Braysher crunched household expenditure data in conjunction with income data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Household Expenditure Survey and the Survey of Income and Housing.