Posted on 11/08/2017 12:42:47 PM PST by davikkm
In mid-October, Upwork, a global freelancing platform where businesses and individual freelance workers connect and collaborate online, released the results of a new study on the gig economy, in conjunction with Freelancers Union, titled “Freelancing in America: 2017” — the most comprehensive measure of the U.S. independent workforce.
This is the fourth annual study of the 57.3 million American freelance workers, which amounts to 36 percent of the U.S. workforce. This chunk of the world’s top economy contributes around $1.4 trillion per year, an almost 30 percent increase year-over-year, per Upwork’s report.
The amazing takeaway from the world’s largest freelancing website is that the majority of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers by 2027 if current trends hold. We could get to over half of the working public deciding to be freelancers within the next decade. The current growth rate of the freelance economy is likely to continue since people seem to be choosing freelancing by choice. The study showed that 63 percent of freelancers said they chose their line and mode of work by choice, up 10 points since 2014.
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BFL
Freelancing is hard work, but there are many rewards.
I have been doing freelance work for over 35 years. The gig economy sucks.
I do not mean to pry, but may I ask what sort of freelance work you do? The reward seems to vary according to the particular field of freelance endeavor.
Much of the gig economy is very low pay.
FreeLancers will never restore the economic power that US had during the Bush administration. The economy and industrial base of the US will not recover. China, Japan, Korea, Russia and Europe will never let the American economy become the powerhouse it was.
That would be my first impression.
What they're really saying is it will be a part-time worker economy for average people and a gig economy for highly skilled and talented people.
Average people (i.e., most of us) will be screwed.
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A very significant share is quite highly paid.
Most licensed professionals more or less pick their own level of income (Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, contractors, etc.)
We are entering the kind of economic conditions of mass poverty that will result in a socialist revolution. The gig economy is modern day pauperism. You can’t make a middle class living this way in most cases.
The only thing saving many older people in the gig economy is that they used to have real job that allowed them to buy homes and build up assets. These bad gigs allow them to scrape out survival. For younger people who never got that chance to have a real job, the gig economy condemns them to life long poverty. They can’t buy a home or save anything.
gig economy goes well with gig marriages.
It’s all being done in India and such for the Civil Engineering gigs.
The people hiring are saving tons of money. Design work for 3-4 bucks an hour.
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>> “Average people (i.e., most of us) will be screwed.” <<
If you get screwed, it will be because you screwed yourself by not establishing yourself in any niche of life.
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People have to develop a “skills portfolio” that is as diversified as any good stock portfolio, just doing one thing won’t cut it, anymore.
Once Trump is gone, that will not help you when the elites flood the US market with as many Central and South Americans and those from the Caribbean, under the hemisphere free trade act.
We are heading into 100 years of absolute poverty and enslavement.
I am a designer, specifically I design exhibits and displays. In truth my specialty is not yet fully immersed in this new freelance world, but graphic design is. It’s impossible to plan your life in this system. I find the job alerts are always for gigs that start tomorrow, and you’re competing against multiple other candidates, many who have more specific experience than you do. The job may last two weeks as stated, but it might end in a few days in which case you’re scrambling to find another gig. There is zero investment in you as a worker, unlike in the older system where employers might pay for additional training and education. On top of all that pay rates on many offers are ridiculously low, as another poster wrote.
Freelance work as a category is fine. I see that as different then the “gig economy,” which seems like a license for amoral millennial aged middle managers to go all Simon Lagree on your ass.
Of course the average person is going to try to make his way in life.
It’s insulting to say otherwise.
There are no jobs that “Americans won’t do.”
There is a trend for lower skilled work to be off-shored and for job “openings” to be for one-per-centers in skills and talent.
You generally get what you paay for.
Yes I think it is.
When you base your company on employees, the number of which may grow or shrink based on necessity, that are augmented by freelancers then that freelance work is great. Long term contract Work is fine too. But if the majority of workers are freelancers it will lead to social instability IMHO. I’m not sure I’m ready to go all doom and gloom like other posters, but how are you going to be able to buy house if you’re constantly changing work location month-to-month?
There is ZERO loyalty between company and worker, which I think was the basis of employment in the past. The company made a commitment to you, and return you made a commitment to them and gave sufficient notice if you’re going to leave for a better opportunity arose. I don’t see that kind of civility continuing if everyone’s a freelancer.
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