[deyan]

For those curious, the methodology is on slide 3 here: https://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in-america-201...

I am genuinely surprised. 7% in 5 years is really not that much, especially given the constant media articles talking about the massive proliferation of the "gig economy."

Yet another example of the difference between reality and reporting.

[drawkbox]

True, but that trickle growth over time has led to a large chunk of the US who are freelancing.

> "More than one in three (35%) Americans freelanced this year."

1/3 of the country freelancing at some point is massive, especially since the internet is really only about 2 decades old in terms of being able to, including the late 90s.

That is a huge market and probably going to end up 1/2 or 2/3 of the country over the next decade [1].

Plus, younger people are freelancing more so a massive growth wave is coming to freelancing: 16-21 is at 47%, 22-34 is at 43%, 35-44 is at 35%, 45-54 is 28% and 55+ is 28% [2]

[1] https://www.upwork.com/press/2017/10/17/freelancing-in-ameri...

[2] https://www.statista.com/chart/10981/freelancers-in-america/

[ghaff]

Freelancing in the sense of filing a 1099-MISC has a very low threshold. In addition to the "gig economy," there are royalties, rent collection as landlords, selling on eBay/Amazon, other online businesses, etc. It is pretty common for even professionals these days to have some side business that triggers the very low threshold to be officially "freelancing." As I said in another comment, I suspect I've "freelanced" far more than I haven't in the course of my career even though I've never had a serious side income and I suspect that's pretty common even for people who aren't Turking or driving for Uber.

[refurb]

People can hold a fully time job and freelance on the side.

[walshemj]

Not with most developed countries employment laws and standard employment contracts with out their employers permission.

[ghaff]

Freelancing in the sense of filing a 1099-MISC is quite common.

If you're a landlord, you'll be filing a 1099-MISC

Essentially any royalties, 1099-MISC

Have any sort of side business even if wholly unrelated to your job, 1099-MISC.

You get into any actual consulting work and, yes, it becomes more problematic with many companies, but still many do it.

I've very much been a full-time employee for essentially all of my career, and I've probably filed 1099-MISCs most years for one thing or another even without having been a landlord.

[refurb]

Meh... they could drive a few hours on the weekend and they’d be counted as a freelancer. I don’t see many employers cracking down on that.

[rhizome]

I can't tell whether or how many are onsite contractors vs true 1099ers.

[AznHisoka]

is a survey of 6000 adults really significant enough? I'm not an expert in statistics, but that seems awfully low.

[dmurray]

6000 is absolutely fine if it's a random sample of the adult population (it would be accurate to within 1%). An important thing to know is that the size of the US population doesn't affect this number.

It's much more likely that the survey has other flaws that prevented it getting a representative sample of US adults than that it got weird answers because the sample size was too small.