The Future of Work via Elance?

25 Feb

The Future of Work via Elance?

Posted by Jason

High unemployment will likely continue in the coming years, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress today. While that is not the news anyone would hope for, it was widely expected.

One approach the unemployed and underemployed are taking is leveraging online forums and tools to compete for work. Elance, one of the major players in this space recently released , Elance, recently released their online talent report.

Elance currently has over 100,000 experts (service providers) registered world-wide, and ready to take on and compete for projects from web programming and marketing, to legal and virtual assistants. The site also publishes nearly $250 million has been paid (and earned) through the site, with over 300,000 projects posted in the past 12 months alone.

While web development remains the top subcategory this past year on Elance (PHP, the most popular skill in 2009, is in this category), demand for mobile development exploded as one of the fastest growing skill subcategories, with a 180 percent increase in earnings in 2009. And, in 2010, there is already strong demand for mobile skills. As an example, within 24 hours of the Apple iPad announcement, 20 iPad application development jobs were immediately posted on Elance

A few stats from the Elance talent report include:

India is the top performing Country, followed by the United States.
Social networking, mobile technologies, and iPhone App development are all within the top 20 skills demanded.
Dollars spent by businesses on artistic and creative skills increased over 40% in 2009.
Writing is a hot skill and highly segmented category into technical writing, creative writing, business writing, blog writing, etc.

I have used Elance to post 5 projects over the past year, and have had great results. What has your experience been? Have you used other sites for freelance work such as Guru?

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