Being employed is great. Benefits. Equipment. New social scene. Your not sitting in your room all day. You can do other stuff besides draw when you get home if you want, etc.
However, when you are employed under contract or hourly rate for a job there is risk there just as much as there is for freelance i think. You can lose the job, your contract doesn't get renewed, the company can go under, you have to go from contract to contract every couple of years, you have a crappy art director, or no art director, and you don't draw what you want really want too necessarily every day...you are hired for your drafting skills so to speak.
You have to follow style guides and make things a certain way. Their way.
Sometimes this can happen. -- Lets say the company is contracted out to make products or elements for games like (and just use these games an example it could be anyone) Borderlands, and WOW. Can you draw panda people, and orcs and stuff, or make them in 3d whatever you were hired for? Yes? Great. Can you now switch your whole mind set the next week to work on the borderlands product? You better know how to follow that style guide or make your own and have a lot of ref. It doesn't always work like that, but depending on who you work for it can. Conceptart companies full of artists are hired like that for that very reason. And its what they do.
Consider doing this when going to the company that you are applying too; Make sure you ask a lot of questions in the interview about their work load, what the department is like, what their production pipeline process is like, what a work day looks like etc, because each job is different.
However with freelance you usually have an art director who has seen your portfolio, or a small time individual, or a company who hires out and wants you to draw it in your style. They've seen your style, they like your style. If they are good, they understand to expect that style. ----- If they are inexperienced or bad...which happens a lot too....they can hire you and then say, I want you to draw it like this style...and you are like, "What? I don't know that style...", or make me this crazy ass thing that is a really really bad idea but I need you to make it anyway. And they are really poor at communicating shape language (aka art language).
Some companies who hire freelancers don't pay until publication. Period. There's so many different parameters and subtleties that you have to balance for either one.
The one thing that I want to say though is that if you are freelancing. You have to hustle. You have to get up at 7am and work until 7pm or later sometimes. You are selling yourself. You are marketing, emailing, phone calls, social media, draftsman and idea person all in one. You have to grind and hustle hard to make that paper. HAWD!
I schedule every day according to what it is that I need to do during the week let alone set aside time for making art. Finding clients, doing social media. Doing THIS what I'm doing right now during a break.
Also check out ArtPact. Use their template contracts and customize them for yourself.
The goal seems to be a lot around here that, "I want to land a job in the concept art world, or gaming industry one day." If you are a freelancer you already are the job.