Why so many people are freelancing

• According to the freelance marketplace Upwork, the number of full-time freelancers grew from 28% in 2019 to 36% in 2020.
• The pandemic may have accelerated the trend, it's not showing signs of slowing down.
• In five years, by 2027, 86.5 million people will be freelancing in the United States.
• Freelancers are in high demand in pretty much every skill area that can be done in front of a computer.

That shift in seeing life as a freelancer as more stable than a traditional full-time role is a big one. The most successful freelancers are ones that “don’t put all their eggs in one basket.” There may not be many if any, recession-proof jobs, but freelancers who have several long-term clients fair much better than full-time employees who are vulnerable to layoffs.

While freelancing may have once been thought of as something mostly for creative fields, it’s expanding to other industries.