About 36% of the American workforce is freelancing. That staggering number seems poised only to grow, with the potential for freelancers to become the majority by 2027. The market is clearly huge, but what exactly does this mean for business? How are freelancers changing the landscape of business? That is the question we will examine today.
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Lowering Overhead Costs
Companies that use freelancers experience a greatly reduced cost in overhead. The reason for this is pretty self explanatory. Since most freelancers are working remotely, businesses using them can cut costs on real-estate needs.
There is also the fact that freelancers cost less than the traditional employee. Even a top-dollar freelancer isn’t going to get the healthcare/onboarding expenses that come with the traditional hire.
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Hyper Specialized Hiring
Even companies with a full traditional staff may sometimes enjoy the benefits of a freelancer. Why? Freelancers with an expertise can be hired on to fulfill specific tasks that a business might not be equipped to tackle.
The specialized hire can come in, do what they do best, and then leave with everyone happy. It’s a win, win.
Workers are Enjoying More Flexibility
The benefits of freelancing are not exclusive just to companies. The freelancers themselves are also seeing advantages that traditional positions don’t offer.
Namely? They can work from anywhere in the world that they want. Anywhere with wifi anyway. Most can also work anytime they want. The traditional world of 9-5 doesn’t exist in the world of freelance.
And, perhaps the best part? The freelancer is free to turn down tasks that they aren’t interested in performing.
The benefits enjoyed by freelancers have become the envy of the rest of the working world. As a result, some businesses are playing around with the idea of giving their staff a little bit more autonomy. However, as it stands, the freelancer community is enjoying a level of freedom other sectors of business just aren’t familiar with.
More Companies are Going Full-Remote
Fully remote companies aren’t exactly common as things currently stand. However, they also aren’t non-existent. Many businesses are finding that the freelancer market is giving them the potential to drastically increase the amount of remote workers they use.
Of course, not all remote workers are freelancers. Still, the two trends, gig work and remote work, at least have plenty of adjacency.
It’s hard to say how far this will go. However, with the projection that one out of every two workers will soon be freelancing, it does seem safe to say that more and more big businesses are going to be tapping this unique market in the near future.
Conclusion
Corporations and freelancers are poised for a symbiotic relationship that should shape the way business is done for decades to come. Some of the changes are, and will be to everyone’s benefit. Lower costs for businesses, more autonomy for employees.
Other aspects of the arrangement aren’t so good. Like the difficulty freelancers have in making a steady income.
We don’t yet know exactly what the future will look like. One thing is clear: the freelancer community is here, and it is growing bigger by the day.