12.19.17 - Freelancing is a force - and we need to reckon with it.
"Within 10 years, at its current growth rate, the majority of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers. Think about that for a second (or a minute): It has major ramifications for our economy, politics, culture. This startling stat comes from “Freelancing in America: 2017” (FIA), a comprehensive study from freelancing website Upwork and Freelancers Union, the labor group representing the independent workforce."
"FIA estimates that already more than one-third of the U.S. workforce are currently freelancing (57 million Americans) and contribute approximately $1.4 trillion annually to the economy - a nearly 30 percent jump since last year. This includes almost half of all working millennials, more than any other generation. The freelance workforce grew at a rate 3 times faster than the U.S. workforce overall since 2014 - and 59 percent of them started freelancing within just the last 3 years."
"'We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution - a period of rapid change in work driven by increasing automation, but we have a unique opportunity to guide the future of work and freelancers will play more of a key role than people realize,' says Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork and co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of Gender, Education and Work. And yet... policies, budget decisions, and economic development initiatives aren’t typically considering freelancers and so-called solopreneurs. A majority of them work from home, isolated. In exurban areas like our Mid-Hudson Valley, there’s a noticeable lack of resources catering to them - mentoring, training, networking and social support."