Freelancing to replace conventional jobs
Zeeshan Wasim
The Covid-19 pandemic struck the world during the beginning of the year and it led towards the disruption of everything, including the global economy. As the economy went down, most of the businesses started seeing more expenses and lesser revenue. As a result of all this, a big number of employers around the world became unable to pay salaries to their employees. And hence, during the year, the livelihood of almost every person is adversely affected, in one way or another.
But the best quality of humans is their ability to adapt to the changing circumstances as the wheel of economy became unstable and businesses and organizations started their spree of layoffs, the regular jobs started diminishing in number. All of this made people turn to the most effective manner of earning: freelancing.
As people lost their regular jobs, a majority of them started turning to freelancing, and started using their skills for earning money in the times of uncertainty. When the regular means of earning a livelihood failed, people turned to the next best thing, which is perhaps the future of ‘jobs’. As more and more people around the world turned towards freelancing, it gave rise to the gig/freelance economy.
Freelancers were always a part of the global economy, but now, they’re more relevant than ever before. According to a recent survey conducted by Payoneer, which is an online financial services company that a major portion of freelancers use for receiving their payments, there was around 30% growth in the global freelance economy after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Upwork, one of the top freelancing platforms, conducted a study to see the effects of the pandemic on freelancing and according to its results about 71% of the freelancers say that the perceptions of people regarding freelancing as a full time career are now becoming more positive than ever.
Similarly, according to the same study, the people who are new to freelancing during this year claim that they are considering freelancing as a full time career because it has helped them become more productive in their work and that they would prefer remote work over working regular jobs in a traditional office environment and people also appreciate the fact that they are able to earn more income in freelancing as compared to the earnings from regular jobs.
Students around the world have access to freelancing platforms and they’re actively participating in the freelance economy by using their skills and talent. As the pandemic has deep rooted effects on the economy, it is apparent that things will not be returning back to normal soon. This means that the number of freelancers is going to keep rising with the time.
Freelancing offers the opportunities to work according to your own terms and conditions, and it allows people to earn a lot more than they usually do with their regular jobs. It is very clear that people are now reluctant regarding traditional jobs. The gig economy keeps growing and people want to be a part of it.
The pandemic caused a lot of complications but people acted smartly by shifting to freelancing. When we consider each and every factor, it is obvious that freelancing is the future. Freelancing might become the norm. The time when people used to work in their offices from 9 am to 5 pm is the past now. The future belongs to the gig economy.
In order to succeed as a professional in the future, make sure that you start focusing on developing the skills that will help you do well in the field of freelancing. The more skills that you have, the better you are going to do in the world of freelancing.
The writer is a freelance columnist and student of BBA at the Institute of Management Sciences (IMSciences), Peshawar. He can be contacted at: srkgothambat@gmail.com.
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