What is freelancing?

Freelancing is a type of self-employment where the worker is not tied down to a single company, project, or organization as their sole employer and source of income. Instead, freelancers offer a skill, service, or combination of the two, and take on clients and customers on a project-basis. This means that freelancers are financially independent and can work on limitless projects at a time with a variety of companies or clients. In charge of finding their own leads, freelancers have the power to pick which projects they do and do not want to take on.

Breaking away from the mold

For so long, society has educated children and teens to gear themselves towards pursuing a lifelong career path in adulthood. Students may choose to go to college along that journey, but either way, society has been teaching us to pick a job that we will do for life, as it will provide a means of gaining financial security. Taught to conform to a standard model of seeking out one company to work for on a full-time basis, most adults are led into jobs where they traditionally work for 40-hours a week, Monday-to-Friday, 9-5. Most coveted are the positions where the company offers coverage of health insurance, a retirement fund, and the stability of a predictable paycheck.

A brief history

This model of employment been the ideal pitched to young people and adults alike, but increasingly over the past 30 years, this dream has been less and less realistic. Companies have increasingly scaled back the level of job security they offer—it is more common today to find precarious, hourly paid jobs that do not offer healthcare or benefits, let alone retirement packages. An unstable system has been building around full-time employment, and the COVID-19 pandemic brought these qualities to a head. The world saw tens of thousands of companies shut down, close their doors, and file bankruptcy. As a result, millions of people became unemployed, laid off, or furloughed when their once-stable job-for-life left them stranded. This shock to the economic system has made millions of people across the world realize that they need to take their employment into their own hands and become freelancers to gain financial stability, lifestyle freedom, and a fulfilling, meaningful career.

Although reaching a height of popularity right now, the idea of freelancing isn’t entirely new. Hints of this form of work began in bursts in the 1800s, 1920s, and 1970s, finally accelerating with the global availability of the internet. Today, freelancers account for over half of the United States workforce, with numbers only projected to increase drastically over the next ten years. Companies synonymous with the early stages of the ‘gig economy’ like Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash, and Lyft set the groundwork for a style of income that now pervades all sectors.