Self-Employed ‘Free Agents’ driving global growth
Elance, the self-described ‘worlds leading site for online work’, recently conducted a survey of 3000 ‘freelancers’ from around the world. They found that the recession has been good to some freelancers as their survey found that many freelancers in some key industries have been thriving since 2009.
Creative (writing and editing, infographics, video production and photography)
IT & Programming (Windows Azure, HTML5, Android, Amazon Web Services)
Marketing (Twitter, Social Media Marketing, SEM, Lead Generation)
Operations (Virtual assistants, Online Research, Legal research and Customer Services)
A Picture of Freelance Job Opportunities In Canada
Canada Ranks 4th in the world at hiring growth for freelancers
The top 10 countries hiring freelancers; #1 US, followed by Australia, the UK, Canada, The UAE, Germany, Singapore, Netherlands, Israel and Switzerland.
Canada ranked 7th in terms of earnings growth by freelancers: the US was 1st, followed by India, Pakistan, the Ukraine, UK, Russia, Canada, Romania, Philippines and China
A Profile of Freelancing in Canada
149,278 Canadian freelance jobs posted in 2012 (this total includes job in IT, Creative, Marketing, Operations, Engineering/Manufacturing, Finance/Management and Legal)
52,695 Canadians Registered Freelancers with Elance
The jobs posted on Elance and other freelance sites range from quick and cheap, for example postings asking someone to write a letter for a fee of $10, design a logo for $20 to more complicated projects including building and running websites, developing applications and more for up to $5000.
Hiring freelancers to fill small and large jobs can be as easy as creating a profile on Elance or any of a number of other online contingent hiring websites and posting a job, a time line and a rate of pay.
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