
Freelancers Now Make Up 35% of U.S. Workforce - uptown
http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2016/10/06/new-survey-freelance-economy-shows-rapid-growth/
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jacquesm
A large chunk of the 'new freelancers' are actually people who would love to
have a normal job but that have been kicked out from their former position and
are now forced to take work that normally would have been done by salaried
employees. No unemployment, no benefits, a more complicated financial
situation and no security whatsoever when it comes to being guaranteed some
income next month. Coupled with limited financial planning skills this is a
disaster waiting to happen, and all that to make it even easier to get rid of
people when the economy hiccups.

Many decades of progress lost in a few short years.

~~~
ahallock
I don't want benefits from my employer, only a paycheck. I like being as
disconnected as possible, really. Why do we feel the need to be so tightly
coupled to our employers? Employers only started offering these benefits to
avoid taxes from what I understand.

~~~
mjevans
I agree with half of that idea. Benefits should be part of the social contract
of society. You should get them as part of paying taxes.

Also, if you want to shift the tax burden for these benefits from employers to
employees that should be reflected in a raise of both income and taxes for
employees.

~~~
ahallock
The social contract of society? Sounds religious to me and also a
rationalization for State power. I only believe in real contracts that I
actually sign and agree to. Moving benefits to the State just gives them a
monopoly on those benefits and that doesn't seem like a good solution, either.

~~~
dredmorbius
"Social contracts", or regulations, solve coordination and transactional
frictions problems:

[http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problem...](http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems)

[http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html#contract](http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html#contract)

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liquidise
This is a bit exaggerated. As the results deck [1] shows, fully 25% (13.5
million) of those listed as Freelancers are, in fact, Moonlighters.
Moonlighters are explicitly described as having stable, full-time employment
in addition to their freelancing gig(s). It also lists another 28% (15.2
million) as people with a traditional job who then additionally gain income
from sources like Uber.

What this adds up to is over 50% of those surveyed do not rely on freelance
work for all of their income. In fact, it is likely that freelance income only
accounts for a minority fraction of the income earned by half the respondents.

1\. [http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-
america-2016...](http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-
america-2016/1) (slide 10)

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dtnewman
This survey seems to consider someone a freelancer if they "have engaged in
supplemental, temporary, project or contract-based work, within the past 12
months". I'd love to see the actual questions asked (if someone has a link,
please share), because it seems to me like the answers may vary widely based
on the wording of the question. I work a full time job as a developer; but for
example, a few months ago, I charged a former employer a trivial amount to fix
a bug in a system that I was familiar with from when I worked there. My wife
is a PhD student. But she took a few babysitting jobs over the summer before
her program started. Does that make us both freelancers? We certainly don't
consider ourselves to be, but depending on how the question is framed, we
might be categorized as such.

~~~
jandrewrogers
This, unless it excludes people that also have a full-time job during that
entire period. Despite being employed full-time, I have a non-trivial amount
of income that comes from "freelance" work for reasons having little to do
with trying to make a rent payment or similar. I know many people in the
software business in the same position.

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mdorazio
First off, their sample size (6,000) is pretty small to be generalizing to all
Americans. Second, if 63% of these freelancers (which is pretty loosely
defined in their survey) say they are freelancing voluntarily, that means 37%
would rather have a normal full-time job. So 13% of total people in the
"workforce" are forced to freelance and are likely underemployed as a result.
That's not exactly indicative of the healthy job market the BLS likes to claim
we have.

~~~
objclxt
> their sample size (6,000) is pretty small to be generalizing to all
> Americans

Not really. It has been a while since I took a statistics class, but a sample
size of around 4,00 will give you a 99% confidence rating for the entire US
population with a 2% margin of error [1]. Of course, you need to pick the
participants correctly, but the size alone is more than enough to generalize
to the entire population.

I would be more suspicious of the fact the survey was run by the Freelancers
Union and Upwork, two organizations who directly benefit from more
freelancers. So it's somewhat in their best interests to get a high result.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination)
and [https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-
calculator/](https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/)

~~~
mdorazio
I'm aware of sample size determination, but minimum sample sizes typically
assume random sampling over the target population. All their sampling
methodology slide says is that it was an online survey of adults who have done
some paid work in the last 12 months, and they did some weighting to match BLS
stats. We have no idea how they found the participants or controlled for bias
in the selection process.

~~~
jnbiche
> I'm aware of sample size determination, but minimum sample sizes typically
> assume random sampling over the target population.

If you were aware of sample size determination, why would you suggest that a
6000 person sample is "pretty small"? It's pretty big for a national study,
actually.

Whether or not the sample selection was properly done with attention paid to
bias is difficult to say, but has little to do with the sample size since a
non-randomly-selected sample is likely worthless whether it's 6000 or 60,000.

I have some significant concerns about this study, but sample size is not
among them.

~~~
mdorazio
Specifically because their methodology for sample selection is entirely
hidden. If you do a generic online survey with self-selected respondents then
6k is not very many people from which to be drawing sweeping conclusions.

Edit: also, I disagree that sample size is entirely worthless in non-random
sample selection. If your sample size is a big enough percentage of the target
population you are studying, you can draw some conclusions regardless of
randomness. You just end up having to use absurdly large samples to get
meaningful data.

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afarrell
> many of these taxpayers do not have access to the traditional social safety
> net, such as unemployment insurance, or access to health care they can
> afford.

1) Doesn't the availability of freelance work act as a safety rope for people
who lose their full-time work or find it hard to get due to schedule
constraints and/or criminal convictions?

2) The ACA was supposed to make health care affordable for freelancers. Is it
in fact failing to achieve that for most people? I remember feeling like the
cost of procedures was on a silver plan too far uncertain and moved to the UK
partly for that reason.

~~~
istorical
Healthcare is still incredibly expensive for freelancers. ACA hasn't lowered
costs the way it was intended to, but it has required that people who
previously went without insurance (because they couldn't afford it) purchase
it.

Depending on your political persuasion, this is either because 1) ACA didn't
go far enough and was de-fanged before birth or 2) it was a bad idea and we
should have gone in a different direction.

~~~
Retric
Healthcare is getting more expensive faster than inflation. ACA did lower
costs when you account for this long term trend. But, not if you compare costs
now vs 5 years ago.

~~~
jrs235
ACA addresses healthcare INSURANCE costs, not actual healthcare costs.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Since the probability that a person will need healthcare and thus utilize
their health insurance, is basically 100%, increasing healthcare costs will
necessitate increasing health insurance costs.

ACA was simply a way to get healthcare costs to be spread out among more
people by forcing them into the insurance pool, which was more politically
viable than the option where all taxpayers pay for each other's healthcare
(taxpayer funded healthcare).

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jorblumesea
> Freelancing in America: 2016 October 6, 2016 Edelman Intelligence
> (Commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union)

That's all you need to know.

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dredmorbius
For those hoping to cut through Forbes BS landing pages, autoplay video, PR
crud, and the rest of it, the survey slide deck is the closest thing I've
found to actual study meat with minimal spin:

[http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-
america-2016...](http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-
america-2016/1)

I'd recommend the article be replaced with this link.

For those questioning methodology, which is never mentioned in the slide deck
with any specificity either, note that the study is conducted by a major PR
firm for:

 _This study commissioned by: © COPYRIGHT 2016 DANIEL J EDELMAN INC. | 63
Upwork Upwork is the world’s largest freelancing website._

No, no conflicts of interest at all here. Nothing to see folks. Keep moving
right along. </p>

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dogma1138
Self employed / business ownership was always a large part of the US
workforce, there was a consolidation period which is now in decline and things
are getting back closer to their older state.

"Freelancer" is just a different name for that simply because you don't need
to own a business front property to be a tradesman today for many professions.

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cloudjacker
Ever see what happens when you apply for a loan or credit card when you write
freelance or self employed? A big red flag that says unsteady income!

If that much of the workforce was shut out of the credit markets that would
suggest a big adjustment in spending patterns in this country.

~~~
themagician
There is no red flag. They ask for two years of tax returns in most cases.

In a lot of cases (most?) a freelancer is an FTE, just for a single person
company.

~~~
1812Overture
I believe when I applied for a mortgage my income from sources other than my
salary was discounted by about 1/3 by the mortgage broker as it wasn't
considered "steady" despite being steady over the tax returns I handed over.
Might depend from broker to broker, I don't know what the federal rules are.

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hw
It's also much easier to do freelancing work now than it was 5 years ago. With
the rise in SaaS like Roninapp, Elance, Reamaze, Upwork, Basecamp etc that
enable freelancers to be more productive, seek and get paid, plus the
freelancer lifestyle of being able to work anywhere they want and being your
own boss, it's not a surprise people are moving towards freelancing instead of
a typical 9-5 job

~~~
JamesBarney
The ACA is the largest reason I can contract. Without it I would be forced to
be an employee.

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noobermin
Might be helpful here is the actual results from upwork[0].

[0] [https://www.upwork.com/i/freelancing-in-
america/2016/](https://www.upwork.com/i/freelancing-in-america/2016/)

Quite the quote on slide 7, surprised it didn't make the article or I missed
it:

    
    
       Half of freelancers (50%) say there is no amount of money 
       that would get them to take a traditional job and stop
       freelancing.

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vacri
I find it hard to believe that 35% of the US workforce is comprised of self-
employed white-collar workers doing contract work.

I'd easily believe "35% of the workforce is self-employed", but _freelancers_?
I guess I'm an old fuddy-duddy that likes words to actually mean something;
get off my lawn &c.

~~~
sunshiney
The term freelancer does refer to a business owner, generally a sole
proprietorship who does not have employees. As someone who has been in
business for 30 years, the difference I keep seeing now is that many
contemporary freelancers do not view thwnselves as ownwrs of a business. I
have been noticing the uptick in that perception for the past 4 or 5 years.
The one positive ourcome imho is that more people now understand the
risk,challenges and struggle associated with running a business. But that will
only truly happen when the roses realize they are roses and begin to think
like one. Much of the conflict I see today is because we have people who think
like employees working as sole proprietors.

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freelancezombie
I freelance because I can't find traditional employment. Most of my income
comes from Upwork - they take 20 percent of most gigs, a huge chunk by any
standard. This article is just sponsored content - an ad piece for Upwork. I
can't even imagine how much they are making by shaving 20 percent off of every
gig... I'd go back to 9-5 any day for stability, benefits and a sane work
schedule. In case you are wondering, I'm one of the higher priced users in my
area of expertise so I have to be selective on projects I take. Even with some
of the highest rates on Upwork I still struggle to make a decent living. Don't
get me wrong, some days it feels awesome but others I feel like I'm putting in
double time over the 9-5 guy.

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arrty88
Freelancers aka people being ripped off and paid via 1099 without any health
insurance

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TAForObvReasons
Source: [https://www.upwork.com/press/2016/10/06/freelancing-in-
ameri...](https://www.upwork.com/press/2016/10/06/freelancing-in-
america-2016/)

> The freelance workforce grew from 53 million in 2014 to 55 million in 2016
> and currently represents 35% of the U.S. workforce. The freelance workforce
> earned an estimated $1 trillion this past year, representing a significant
> share of the U.S. economy.

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popdoit
After working in agencies/consultancies, I realized I could cut out the middle
man and let clients use me directly. So, yes, I freelance or consult because I
found a need.

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ixtli
Can someone provide an archive.org or some sort of mirror for me to read the
article? Forbes now require you to disable ad blockers, but then auto play
video with audio :(

~~~
thrownaway23
[http://archive.is/jhVvS](http://archive.is/jhVvS)

~~~
ixtli
Thank you :)

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rajeshp1986
I doubt these no.s are really true. I feel these numbers are extrapolated
after a survey over a small no. of people in a locality.

H1b workers are not allowed to do freelancing. They need to have a regular
office job. Major chunk of technology workers are people working on H1b visas.
if not H1b, there are many people who are waiting for green-card approval.
This takes a long time and I don't think they can work as freelancers as well.

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smpetrey
Not surprised. I freelanced for something like 5 years before finally getting
a 9–5 job (not that it pays much more but it's a stable income).

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serge2k
> according to the “Freelancing in America: 2016″ survey released this morning
> by the Freelancers Union, based in New York City, and the giant freelancing
> platform Upwork, headquartered in Silicon Valley

Well I'm sure these parties have nothing to gain by releasing junk data.

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CiPHPerCoder
Warning: Autoplay video.

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jacobsenscott
Read that as freeloaders.

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Chronic9q
So the unemployment rate is actually higher than we thought...

