Global Online Employment
Elance, the leading global platform for online employment, released a new Global Online Employment Report that reveals some insightful trends in global online employment. Elance has over 2 million users in over 150 countries. The company helps businesses hire and manage contract, project-based employees in the cloud. As the largest global platform for online employment, the company has tons of data that offers great insight regarding the trends of online employment, contract employment, and the overall snapshot of the growth of the non-traditional employment arrangements that are on the rise. Just how significant are the trends in non-traditional employment?
Global Online Employment Report Highlights
In Q1, Elance had 193,000 jobs posted. The number of job postings has grown every quarter since 2009 continuing on an upward trend representing a continued demand for temporary workers. More importantly, this trend represents a shift in the mindset of hiring. Employers have historically hired with a pay for time agreement. Now, employers are hiring for the end result that these project-based workers provide. When the project is complete, the job is complete. The online worker isn’t doing to bad either as Elance reported that contractor earnings totaled $43 Million. The number of registered contractors continues to rise with nearly 1.5 million registered contractors and slightly over 1 Million registered clients hiring contractors. Elance has allowed people to take advantage of searching for part time Jobs online that are contract-based and this trend continues to grow.
Demand Trends
Elance data shows a significant demand increase for specific services in business card design, market research, branding, and lead generation with a very significant increase in demand for creative talent. In fact, skills in design and multimedia such as video, audio, and even writing represent 42% of total jobs posted on Elance. The most dominate skills in demand are IT, representing 39% of jobs posted. The number one country hiring on Elance is the United States followed by Australia and the United Kingdom.
The Benefits of Online Employment
For employers, the benefits of online employment are clear. Many businesses turned to project-based workers in a down economy to cut their costs while maintaining productivity. For workers, the ability to connect with employers globally via the internet allows them to work beyond their local economy and capture income opportunities elsewhere across the globe, particularly for those with in-demand skills. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 55,000 jobs added in February were temp jobs, not payroll jobs. The Q2 2012 U.S. Job Forecast report from Careerbuilder which surveyed 2,300 HR professionals and hiring managers indicated 34% of employers planned on increasing their temp and contract workers, another sign of the growing trend of the contract worker, dubbed the “solopreneur.”
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