When many people think of freelance workers, what immediately comes to mind is US based companies leveraging less expensive foreign labor. This perception is however not at all accurate!

You may be surprised to learn that many freelance workers are based in the United States, and a large number are Millennials, or those born in 1981 or later.

It is true that when you contract freelance workers through crowd sourcing sites such as MyCrowd, oDesk, Elance, or Freelancer you are able to access a quality pool of talented international workers, with a wide range of skills, experience levels and price points. However, many of these workers are US based and those numbers are growing. This is not the picture of the entirely off shore workforce that often comes to mind when one thinks of freelancers and freelance platforms.

Sara Horowitz, founder of New York based The Freelancers Union, claims that ‘Nearly one in three working Americans is an independent worker. That’s 42 million people – and growing.’

According to recent data, many younger workers, particularly Millennials, are choosing to seek out freelance work more than their older peers. Crowdsourcing platform Elance recently surveyed more than 3,000 freelance workers, and over 47% of them identified themselves as Millennials. This trend is thought to be reflective of not only the Millennials’ preferences for a non-traditional work environment, but also drivers such as the current business climate. Many Millennials entered the workforce at the height of the recession and were met with high unemployment numbers and fewer job prospects, and they are therefore less risk adverse, and perhaps more comfortable with freelance work, than their older coworkers.

 

A recent Harvard Business Review article examined key contributing factors to the popularity of freelance work among Millennials, and why it especially appeals to them. The article stated that Millennials as a group have a different understanding of ambition and what it means to be a good worker than previous generations may have had. Millennials also tend to seek personal fulfillment and work-life balance in their careers more consistently than older workers.

According to a recent Forbes article “45% of Millennials choose workplace flexibility over pay.”

Another key driver that has made freelance work more attractive to millennial workers is that today’s companies are not necessarily based around a physical office. Companies are now commonly comprised of groups of freelance or remote workers, often working in different cities or even countries. An ever increasingly sophisticated toolbox of digital communication applications and platforms is making this kind of business structure more and more popular.

The use of freelancers to build a business will continue to rise in the near future. The shift in freelance worker demographics and current economic conditions are changing the perception of freelancers and what type of workers you will find on top platforms. Sites such as MyCrowd understand the demand for high quality and diverse pools of freelance workers. They focus on making it extremely easy to hire the right freelancer with the expertise and skill level you need for any geography worldwide.

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