How Global is the Gig Economy?

For years, experts have been hailing a new era where companies can hire talent on a per project basis and labor can have a more flexible work-life balance. With the advent of many infrastructural technologies (personal websites, automated invoicing, flexible cloud storage, etc), many individuals have been taking advantage of their valuable skills and joining the freelance economy. But few types of analytics exist to show how this trend is really changing. At what rate are freelancers growing? Where are they located? And what skills do they have?

By tracking the role of freelancer in public profiles, Revelio Labs is able to see these trends in real time. Below is the growth rate of freelancers over time:

Below are the share of freelancers in the largest economies:

And below are the top skills of freelancers:

Takeaways:

• The freelancer economy is still small but growing rapidly.
• Lebanon leads the world in freelancing with 2.4% today, up from only 1.3% 10 years ago.
• Creative tasks, such as design, writing, and editing, appear to be the most common skills for freelancers.

If you have any ideas of other types of analytics to use or would like to hear more about Revelio Labs, please feel free to reach out to us.