The Freelancers Union and Upwork released their 2015 Freelancing in America study last week. This is the 2nd year this group has done a comprehensive look at freelancing.
Key study findings include:
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The percent of the U.S. workforce freelancing held steady at 34%, that equates to an estimated 53.7 million people
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60% of the respondents said it was their choice to become a freelancer.
- The majority of freelancers (60%) say they make more money freelancing.
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Technology is making it easier to find freelance work (73% of freelancers agree)
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More than half (51%) of freelancers had obtained a project online at some point in their freelance career
While there's lots of interesting information in the study - the more detailed study results deck can be found here - I found their information on multiple job holder and/or people with multiple sources of income of most interest.
While they don't explicitly state how many of their respondents report having multiple sources of income, two of their freelancer categories - moonlighters and diversified workers - clearly have multiple income sources.
These two categories combined project to 27 million Americans. This is way more than the roughly 7 million reported by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics as having multiple jobs.
This group also appears to be growing quite rapidly, last year this study reported there were less than 25 million Americans in these two categories.
We've long believed the BLS under reports the number of multiple job holders due to the way the ask about 2nd jobs. Studies like this one help to spread the word on this.
For more on the 2015 Freelancing in America study see the excellent summary over at Spend Matters.
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