Mavenlink just released the study above on the New Independent Workforce and the rise of the new economy.
As a company that has worked with many self-employed or "solopreneurs" along with remote teams in the United States, Ukraine, Philippines, Peru and many others, the upward trend in this workforce is unsurprising, but the growth is rather dramatic.
According to Mavenlink's infographic research, the independent workforce has grown only 1.3M people to 43.9M since 2005, but will jump to 64.9M by 2020. That's over a 1600% jump in nearly the same time frame.
Another interesting data point is the huge discrepancy between where this group worked. Over 90% worked from home, while less than 10% claimed to work from private offices, shared spaces, or coffee shops. Looks like there is a huge market for home office products, and a growing market for shared office spaces (or coworking), such as Coloft in Los Angeles.
At webbROI, we'll continue to work with independent workers for certain writing, website design, website development projects (we also have people in-house that do all of that), but we've been fortunate to bring some of these solopreneurs on full-time as well.
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Have you had success with the independent workforce? Have you hired any part- or full-time? Where were these people located?