MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — (Marketwire) — 02/06/13 — , the leading online work platform, today revealed online hiring and freelancer earnings set new records in 2012. Elance-s showed that demand for online talent surged with the need for mobile development and web programming leading the charge. Jobs for expert talent in marketing and web content also expanded while independent professionals in locations with the highest unemployment rates experienced the strongest earnings growth.
“Our results prove that our focus on connecting businesses with the highest quality talent is paying off. The number of businesses hiring on Elance increased dramatically, driving strong growth in freelancer earnings,” said Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance. “We-re well on our way to reaching $1 billion in cumulative freelancer earnings in 2013.”
Elance continued to expand in 2012 with 345,000 new businesses (+54%) on Elance posting over 80,000 jobs a month. During the year, 779,000 new freelancers (+44%) joined Elance to find work, with annual freelancer earnings surpassing $200M (+40%) for the first time.
Professionals with skills in web and mobile programming saw skyrocketing demand for their technology expertise, resulting in earnings increases for experts with top skills. HTML developers had increased earnings of 149%, and PHP and CSS experts saw earnings surge by 108% and 103%, respectively. Mobile developers with Android (+146%) and iOS (+132%) skills also earned more in 2012.
Independent professionals continue to profit from businesses publishing more of their content online. Freelancer earnings reflect the rise in demand for these skilled services: content writing (+151%) and blog writing (+78%) made huge leaps over the past year, as well as web design (+205%) and graphic design (+165%), with the biggest increases for Photoshop (+165%) and Illustrator (+131%) experts. Marketers with online expertise, including digital marketers (+190%) and social media marketers (+132%) saw substantial increases in earnings in 2012.
In the United States, professionals took control of their employment destinies and earned more money than ever before on Elance, particularly those in hard-hit regions experiencing high unemployment. States such as Rhode Island (10.2% unemployment) had freelance earnings grow by 89% in the past year. This jump was also seen in Mississippi (8.6% unemployment) where earnings rose 67% and New Jersey (9.6% unemployment), where earnings climbed 58% in 2012. Other hard hit states such as Michigan (8.9% unemployment) and California (9.8% unemployment) saw 54% and 41% increases in earnings, respectively.
Global economic powers continue to benefit by hiring online freelancers. The top 10 GDP countries increased their online hiring by an average of 67%. Notable countries setting records include China (+204%), Japan (+109%), Italy (+70%), France (+66%), Germany (+50%) and the United Kingdom (+42%).
The Eurozone unemployment rate rose to 11.8% in November, the highest rate on record, which is driving professionals in some of Europe-s highest-unemployment countries to showcase talent online, specifically in programming and IT. Countries including Poland (+118%), Bulgaria (+40%) and Ukraine (+38%) all saw significant earnings growth over the past year. The majority of earnings came from web and programming jobs, leveraging the region-s strong technical talent base.
Elance is where people work differently. The pioneer in today-s freelance revolution, Elance is the world-s leading platform for online work.
Today over 500,000 businesses and 2 million freelancers use Elance in 170+ countries. Innovative global enterprises, small businesses and start-ups tap into the Elance talent pool, building teams from software engineers, application developers and web and graphic designers to copywriters, market researchers, data scientists, social media markets, customer service agents and other business professionals. More than 1 million freelance jobs are completed through Elance annually.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California and Oslo, Norway, Elance is a privately-held company.
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