17
February
2010
Elance Report Reveals Increasing Demand For Online Talent
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of people who are self-employed increased to roughly 42 million at the end of 2009. Data introduced today by Elance shows its online talent pool made more than $70 million in 2009 — a 45 percent increase for US service providers alone since the beginning of last year. Businesses hiring on Elance grew at a dramatic rate — up more than 40 percent since 2008 while total earnings by people working on Elance passed $245,000,000. The trends demonstrate that online talent is an important employment segment. The labor market increasingly involves flexible work arrangements, self-employed workers and a shift to online workplaces.
- Mobile Madness: While web development remains the top subcategory this past year on Elance (PHP, the most popular skill in 2009, is in this category), demand for mobile development exploded as one of the fastest growing skill subcategories, with a 180 percent increase in earnings in 2009. And, in 2010, there is already strong demand for mobile skills. Within 24 hours of the Apple iPad announcement, 20 iPad application development jobs were immediately posted on Elance. At the time of this release, there are 70 open iPad jobs on the site. This trend is likely to follow the fast growth of iPhone projects which saw more than 8,800 iPhone jobs completed on Elance in 2009. In addition, Android is rising fast in the ranking of skills in demand — up 400 percent in the past 6 months with more than 170 projects posted in the last month alone.
- Craving Creativity: Dollars spent by businesses hiring creative skill sets increased over 40 percent in 2009, and the growing trend continues into the new decade. In January 2010, companies are hiring creative professionals with skills in Writing (the #1 ranked skill in this category) and Graphic Design (#2) to augment the product and marketing functions inside their organizations.
- On-And-Offline Marketing: Demand for both online and traditional marketing talent continued to grow rapidly in 2009. Top marketing skills, including Search Engine Optimization (#1), Internet Marketing (#2), Lead Generation (#3), and Social Media Marketing (#7) showed a 46 percent growth in earnings.
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