74 percent freelancers are not downsizing their team despite global crisis: Survey

Conserve as much cash as possible seems to be the strategy most entrepreneurs and businesses are following to survive the economic fallout from Covid-19. As businesses search for more flexible, lower expense alternatives to the traditional payroll, will this boost or derail the freelance economy?

According to a recent survey by online payment platform Payoneer, 32 per cent of freelancers said that demand for their services had greatly decreased in the last three months with the greatest drop in demand coming from clients in North America and Europe. Freelancers serving businesses in Asia and Australia experienced slightly less impact, according to the survey which polled 1000 freelancers across 100+ countries.

Surprisingly, Ukraine - one of the fastest-growing outsourcing locations according to the survey - bucked the trend. 56 per cent of Ukrainian freelancers reported that demand from clients in North America either increased or remained the same while 50 per cent stated that demand from Europe had not declined.


Accelerating the Freelance Economy
Although the demand for freelancers globally appears to have slowed in the short-term, many believe that it is just a matter of time until businesses get back on their feet and turn to outsourcing to acquire quality talent.

53 per cent of those surveyed believe that demand will increase as compared to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, with a further 21 per cent expecting demand to revert to at least pre-crisis levels.

“Remote work, and the talented freelancers who work remotely, will increasingly become the norm,” said Hayden Brown, CEO, Upwork in an interview with a business magazine. “The trends supporting this started well before the current crisis and may be accelerated by the changes everyone is making to adapt to new realities.”

Anticipating this positive shift, freelancers managing their own team (21 per cent of those surveyed) sought to protect their employees and sub-contractors from the economic fallout of the crisis.

74 per cent of freelancers managing their own teams said they will either keep their team the same size or grow it while 83 per cent stated that they had either kept their team’s rates the same or even increased them in a few cases.