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To Freelance or Not To Freelance? A Question for the New Year.
2019 was an experimental year for Oblique. The company traveled the world working remotely out of various co-working spaces (12 workspaces on 5 continents, to be exact). While fully immersed in the remote work lifestyle, they met many freelancers across the globe. That is not to say that digital nomadism is synonymous with freelancing. But, while traveling they noticed that freelance talent pools are growing quickly the world over and providing a flexible and viable business model for those who want a less traditional structure.
Having observed this, it’s not that surprising to hear that 35% of the US workforce is now freelance.
But what does that mean?
In order to dissect that, we have to mention the traditional reputation of freelance work: constant hustling, underpayment, and a short lifespan. Until recently, many freelancers treated this workstyle as a placeholder for the time in between full-time salaried jobs. However, Freelancers Union (which has 450,000 members) conducted a survey ultimately indicating that in 2019, for every freelancer who saw it as a temporary situation, another saw it as long-term lifestyle change. As of this past fiscal year, freelancing accounts for 5% of the USA’s GDP, or 1 trillion dollars. That’s more than the construction and transportation industries.
But how is this possible?
Well firstly, it indicates that more and more businesses are vacating their formerly traditional business models to one equipped to deal with freelance staff models. If it didn’t work, the statistics would have shown that. So, it could be a chicken and the egg situation here: Did the businesses decide to switch to keep up with the times or did they switch and then the number of freelancers in the US increased? Who’s to say. But we, Oblique Design, pride ourselves on understanding the value of a great relationship with freelance print and interactive designers, logo designers, packaging designers, website developers, copywriters, etc. This is how we operate daily and concurrently with the creative industry’s trends. We’re proud to say that talented, hardworking freelancers make us the interactive design agency we are.
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