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- [Superpost] The Future of Freelancing: Emerging trends in the Gig Economy, 2024 and beyond
[Superpost] The Future of Freelancing: Emerging trends in the Gig Economy, 2024 and beyond
Disclaimer: I’m not a “source of truth”, I’m not a scientist, I’m not a professional researcher. I’m simply a freelancer, with a background in Journalism, and with a vested interest in understanding my profession, helping others understand their profession, and (hopefully) sparking some discussion that helps us all be proactive agents - rather than bystanders - in our collective professions.
Introduction & hypothesis
When I talk to my mum about freelancing, it becomes glaringly obvious to me that her experience as a freelancer is starkly contrasted against mine. Freelancing 30 years ago is not the same as freelancing today (something which, in all honesty, can be said about almost everything).
A particularly interesting difference is that when she freelanced, it was going against the grain. Today, however, being a freelancer is far more common, especially amongst Millennials but also with GenZs and GenAlphas.
As I mentioned in my disclaimer, I’m a freelancer myself, and the number of people I meet who are freelancers, have been freelancers, or want to go into freelancing is not trivial.
Being a freelancer is more relevant and less stigmatised today than it ever has been. And my hypothesis is that freelancing will only continue to increase in popularity.
Method & focus
To write this post, I researched and gathered insights about these 3 questions:
Why is freelancing becoming more common?
What can we expect from freelancing in the next decade?
What can we do now, to prepare for “Freelancing 2035”?
To get this info, I looked at online articles, blog posts, and websites, as well as drew from personal experience and anecdotes.
What comes next are my findings, and some personal insights that hopefully begin to answer them.
This post is by no means meant as conclusive, but I think it does a good job of covering the introduction to this topic. And I’d love to hear your thoughts in order to further the discussion.
Quick aside: Freelancing versus The Gig Economy
These are actually pretty much the same thing.
Freelancing falls under The Gig Economy (tGE), and freelancing in tGE involves consultant, part-time, or even full-time work, but for a number of different employers at the same time.
These tend to be fixed-term and short-term contracts, ranging from a week to a year or two, and could be any type of work from waitering/waitressing, to business consulting or even social media influencing.
Where-as tGE has tended to reference small/odd jobs (like waitering/waitressing or running errands), in this post I’ll be looking at freelancing more broadly to include everything from bartending, to professional graphic design.
Question 1: Why is freelancing becoming more common?
TL;DR: There are more resources available, to learn more things, in order to do more things, in more places around the world, with more diverse people from around the world, for more socio-political reasons that make working abroad more appealing than working locally.
We have greater access to knowledge & skills
SkillShare, Section School, Udemy, Coursera… the list of online skills platforms is literally almost endless. And most of these come with legitimate accreditations you can add to your CV.
You are no longer stuck with the institutions in your city; today, anyone can learn almost anything - even if it’s just how to plumb your own sink from a YouTube video.
The point is: It’s become easier to learn more things from the comfort of your own home.
What this does is pump thousands of average-to-skilled workers into the labour market, in multiple disciplines and industries - all of which are seeking jobs.
Where there isn’t a job for them, they create one; and a new freelancer is born.
We aren’t as geographically limited as we used to be
With the internet, you can do almost anything from anywhere. I can apply for a job in Mauritius from my house in the United States. And I can work from my home, from Spain, or from a different country every month.
The limits to freelancing are no longer geographic, but rather financial and personal: Can I afford to work from anywhere, and do I want to work from anywhere?
This means that the labour market has opened up dramatically, and the tech industry has been one of the first to grab the opportunities involved in being able to hire across borders.
And, if I can work for anyone from anywhere, why would I limit myself to picking one? What tGE offers the labour market is free-choice, flexibility, and a worldwide selection of work opportunities.
At the same time, companies have realised they can hire internationally more easily. And for once-off or short-term projects, it makes more sense to hire a freelancer that doesn’t need company onboarding, 1:1s, or growth opportunities.
These two trends make it easier for someone to freelance because the hit rate for successful applications has multiplied to include not just your own city, but the entire world. Even if only one company hires me, I can apply to 5000 as opposed to only 10.
Artificial Intelligence
This is a mammoth umbrella-reason for why freelancing is becoming more common, but here are some of the primary reasons why AI has such a profound impact on tGE:
Learning new skills has become exponentially easier and faster
Freelancers only need to be an expert in one thing, and can lean on AI to cover their skills gaps (e.g. I can be a pro designer, and get AI to do my copywriting)
Freelancers can build an AI team, and outsource previously hard-to-do, low-level business activities to AI (e.g. writing proposals, tax assistance, strategic thinking, professional email writing, marketing, etc.)
AI can build marketing strategies that help freelancers reach customers more easily
AI is accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world
We compromise less on our values
Since COVID, we’ve pretty much all experienced how important it is to have time to focus on life: More time with family, less time commuting, more flexibility to put on a load of washing in between work, more time to sleep an extra hour or two in the morning… These things are no longer perks; they’re now dealbreakers.
Getting a job has changed from job-seekers needing to prove to an employer that they’re worth it, to become employers having to double-down on employer branding in order to show job-seekers why their company is worth applying to.
This has fundamentally changed how we look for work. It’s not enough that we get a salary. The labour market knows it’s worth, and doesn’t want less than a job that lets them control their own lives and their own time.
One such value is having more flexibility with when and where we work - something which freelancing offers right out of the gate. Here’s a look at a Google Trends graph comparing the search terms “remote work” (blue) and “freelancer” (red) over the last 10 years:
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/674c30b6-2a37-4ad8-94bb-c6f6db45b3ee/8ed4977d-fe32-4161-9e07-0b8e5d760f2d_2920x900.jpg?t=1734945349)
Unsurprisingly, there’s a little bump where lockdowns happened in 2020, but I reckon that was more out of necessity than desire. What’s more interesting is the continued rise in the trend, even after businesses opened back up.
Our work needs to matter more
Similarly to the above point, the current generation of job-seekers cares a lot about doing work that actually matters to them.
This means that the labour market is actively OK with being unemployed until they get a job that makes them happy.
Again, this is much easier to do when you pick a variety of part-time gigs that suit you at a certain point in time, than it is when you lock yourself into a full-time position. What fulfils you might change in 6 months, and tGE gives people the flexibility to pursue things that don’t stress them out, that are fun, and that make them excited to get up for work.
Question 2: What can we expect from freelancing in the next decade?
TL;DR: More companies will lean more on freelancers, which will mean more jobs for freelancers. More jobs for freelancers, means more freelancers in the labour market, more changes to the freelancing landscape, and at a much faster rate.
This is only accelerated by ever-advancing changes in tech, AI, travel, economies, socio-political circumstances, etc. With more freelancers working in more industries, freelancing will get more robust as far as a sustainable income stream goes. Gone will be the days of freelancing as a super fickle employment type.
There’ll be more freelancers
Companies are already hiring more and more freelancers. Fiverr, one of the more well-known gig economy platforms, has data on enterprise hiring of freelancers, and they say that “freelancers have become critical to nearly every industry under the sun.”
The benefits of hiring freelancer versus a full-time employee for companies is a little bit like renting a power tool based on what you’re doing. It makes companies dynamic: Since I don’t know how often I need an angle grinder, I’ll rent one to make the exact thing I want; then, if I need it again, I’ll rent it again.
But renting a power tool (ie. hiring a freelancer) totally cuts out the need to buy a very specific tool (ie. hire a full-time employee), and then clean and store it (ie. check-ins, 1:1s, benefits, etc.) or upgrade it (ie. growth opportunities).
It’s also a great way to include previously excluded groups. In fact, Europe encourages international, part-time hiring, especially when it comes to bringing more women into the workforce.
With so many opportunities to both learn and work from anywhere in the world, it just makes sense that more people will turn to tGE.
Bilingual freelancers will have an edge
According to FlexJobs in their 2024 State of Remote Freelance Jobs Report, the top four fastest growing areas in remote freelance work, ranked in order, were:
Bilingual
Graphic Design
Art & Creative
Copywriting
With the world’s economy being ever more international, it makes sense that people who can bridge language barriers will be more valuable over those who can’t. Working in two languages not only makes you a more valuable freelancer, but it also multiplies the number of clients you can work.
Freelancing will be 99% remote
More people are realising that people don’t need to sit in an office together to get work done. Just look at what happened in COVID.
Sure, the trend right now is moving back towards more in-person engagement, but even then it’s more often than not hybrid - ie. a little bit of both remote and in-person.\
However, the internet makes online work much easier; and satellite internet means you’ll have internet from literally anywhere. So, why choose here when you could work from there? Or there? Or there and there?
Remote work makes the reasons freelancers choose freelancing much easier to achieve, and it also just makes sense for freelancing in general. For many short-term gigs, it isn’t feasible to be in-person for all of them.
Some work does necessitate in-person engagement (nursing, on-site visits, etc.), but even those are still evolving with advancements in virtual therapy, drones creating 3D models, etc.
Either way, freelancers will be remote. And they’ll expect that from their future employers.
Freelancing will integrate with AI
If you don’t use AI as a freelancer, you won’t be competitive. This is just a fact.
Projections for the use of AI in the workplace say that “could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs.” This is just generally speaking. But AI replacing jobs doesn’t mean there won’t be work; it just means the role of a freelancer will need to change dramatically, and will need to include working alongside AI in some capacity.
I’ve always said:
What’ll likely happen is that AI will take over execution, and humans will move more and more to strategic, integrated, big-picture thinking. It’s likely that freelancers will end up becoming more like consultants or creative directors, helping companies move towards their goals by bringing in their unique freelancing AI-toolbelt.
Freelancing will be more sustainable*
*The impact of AI on freelancing’s sustainability is framed as relatively positive in this post. I see the impact of AI on freelancers as completely dependent on how freelancers use it. Leverage it, and you’ll float; don’t, and you’ll sink. But this definitely lacks some more in-depth discussion in this post.
When employers start leveraging AI for majority of their day-to-day operations, companies will likely lean more and more on freelancers for project-based work: “The run-of-the-mill stuff is handled by AI, so let’s hire in a specialist to help us nail this project.”
Given that, there’ll probably be more “gigs” available for freelancers in the labour market, meaning it won’t be as insecure as many think freelancing is today.
And this is quite a critical point to underline: When there are more gigs than freelancers, the power of the labour market is likely going to shift away from employers choosing job-seekers, towards freelancers and job-seekers choosing employers.
With more gigs in the market, it will move from “I don’t know when I’ll land my next gig” to “I’m not sure when I want to find/accept my next gig.”
The other side to this is, of course, that freelancing will also probably be more competitive. More freelancers also means more competition - so, how do you stand out? Enter, my third and final question:
Question 3: What can we do now, to prepare for “Freelancing 2035”?
TL;DR: Prepare to work in a remote-first, AI-first, highly competitive freelancer labour market. Find a community, find your niche, and get cozy.
Hunt in packs (ie. community)
A huge asset for any freelancer will be finding a community of freelancers to connect with. This could be with a focus on skill sharing, support, collaborative work, networking, or opportunity sharing… but having a community will make keeping up with the future of freelancing much much easier. Community is also the best marketing hack for those who hate selling themselves.
I’m part of a group of freelancers that meet once a month, where we discuss things we’re struggling with, thinking about, or even just doing. It’s an immense help, and I’ve gotten lots of work from that as well.
I’m also part of a collective of freelancers called Candid, which is a community that allows us to share insights and skills as freelancers, but also lets us access potential clients looking for freelance assistance.
Get good at digital nomadism
Since it’s likely you’ll be working 90% remote, it’s critical you get good at a home office routine and setup. Think about things like:
Is my desk setup optimised for working?
Do I have clearly separated work and personal spaces at home?
Do I have a routine that stops me from rolling out of bed, to behind my desk?
Have I got planned leave in the year?
How could I explore working at different locations for different kinds of work (e.g. libraries for focus work, coffee shops for light work, co-working spaces for meetings)?
Are there things happening in other countries I could look into visiting, that augment the work I do and help me access a different network of people?
Get good at using AI
There are so many different AI learning platforms out there right now that it doesn’t even make much sense to start listing them here.
The point really is: Start using AI in your work yesterday. And the best way to learn is to do.
Some simple ways I incorporate AI into my daily work, that also helps me learn new ways of using it, include:
Drafting proposals
Answering tricky emails
Proofing invoices
Coming up with logo ideas
Out-of-the-box thinking
Ideas for how to grow my business
Tips on improving my LinkedIn posts
Coming up with blog post ideas (fun fact: this post was a suggestion from AI!)
Skills development areas that would help me in the short-term
Become bilingual
Borders are becoming irrelevant, outside of the admin of needing to carry around a passport. As far as where you can be digitally, you’re already global.
Knowing at least two, if not three, languages relatively well (I’m not talking political-debate-level fluent here; just conversational enough) will become superpower as a freelancer. You want to be able to reach as many people as a possible, and you want to be able to communicate with them well.
Language is an intrinsic part of our identity. So, having that in common with someone can be a huge bonus for landing, and retaining a client.
Find your niche
In a sea of freelancers, you need a reason why someone should hire specifically you.
Being AI-competent is a great competitive edge for now, but soon we’ll all be AI-pros and you’ll need something else.
Defining your niche will help you target a very specific group of people that no one else can access as well as you.
Defining your niche early will help you lock-in those clients as your own. Someone who works with you once, and is totally blown away, is probably not going to hire someone else.
Finding a niche doesn’t have to mean learning many different skills and hyper-specialising in your craft. It can be as simple as crafting your story to emphasise something that resonates with someone in particular.
For example, someone will probably hire me and not another graphic designer because I understand tech and storytelling. I happen to have a background in journalism and in tech, and so I work with a lot of tech companies needing to detangle complex software solutions for lay-people, or needing to bring complex tech jargon into easy-to-understand visual elements. All I did was bring two elements of my background into the foreground. And voila, I’ve got a niche.
Conclusion:
The future promises a more connected, more flexible, and possibly more fulfilling way of working - and freelancing is poised to be at the heart of this transformation. By staying informed, building supportive communities, and harnessing technology like AI, freelancers can not only anticipate changes but can drive them.
The journey to “Freelancing 2035” is well underway; I’m excited to shape it to be as rewarding as possible. Your thoughts and experiences are invaluable - let's discuss what freelancing means to you right now, and what you hope it will become. I’d love to discuss in the comments what you think. :)
A short note on privilege
This entire discussion around freelancing obviously overlaps with the discussion of privilege (ie. am I afforded the same opportunities as others, due to my demographics?), but that’s not something I can do justice to cover in this post.
It is an important one, and I think it does improve some of the arguments I make in this post, but I think it deserves its own research. If you have any thoughts on doing this / how to do this, please reach out.
However, for the purposes of this post, these are the assumptions I explicitly made:
I’m assuming most people have access to the internet, and
I’m assuming that this internet access can actually make it easier for people to overcome the barriers they would face in “normal”, geographically-bound, full-time employment.
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