Am I the only one who feels rather nervous about today's freelance economy? Solid, well-paying jobs with good conditions are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Today, there are freelancers working in all industries from taxi drivers to journalists. Some reports say that freelance jobs represent more than one-third of America’s workforce.

 

On the face of it, being a freelancer makes a lot of sense. The employee can work remotely from wherever he or she is the world; all the freelancer needs is a laptop and a good Internet connection. I should point out that I am one of these people. The freelancer avoids the morning and evening rush hours and saves money on gas and other car or travel expenses. Perhaps I shouldn't admit to this, but I often listen with a certain degree of enjoyment to the traffic news at 7.45 AM and feel sorry for commuters stuck in endless traffic enduring another frustrating and irritating start to the day before I head downstairs to my office several minutes later.

 

Freelancers generally have the benefit of working more flexibly, creating their own hours rather than racing to get to the office after dropping off the kids at school and taking on the daily battle against hundreds of other drivers before making it to the train station by the skin of their teeth sweating and irritable (welcome to my former life).

 

Statistics show that younger people, not unnaturally, enjoy working in freelancer positions more than do older workers. They enjoy the freedom and flexibility of the hours, along with the ability to work independently. Reports suggest that almost half of Americans aged 18-24 have either full- or part-time freelance jobs, whereas the figure is 28 percent for those in the Baby Boomer generation.

 

Freelancers can travel more freely and go on vacations and even work from the beach, if necessary (I can confirm this, although in my case it's usually a hotel room or café). And they can increase or decrease the number of hours they want to work each week or month, based on other commitments.

 

In addition, an extraordinary number of younger people have established online e-commerce operations which, in many cases, simply work in the background leaving them free to either enjoy leisure time or further develop their businesses.

 

And for many freelancers working in sales positions, even a laptop is not necessary, since sophisticated smartphones provide many of the same capabilities.

 

The advantage for companies in working with freelancers, or a "a flexible, on-demand labor model" is even clearer. No need to provide office space, computers, printers, kitchenettes and so on. The employees don’t receive company-paid benefits, and employers are generally delighted to be able to simply pay over a monthly amount and not have to be involved in all the paperwork and monthly expenses relating to pension and savings plan payments.

 

A wide range of apps to enable companies to work easily with freelancers are available in the Cloud, including those dealing in training courses, employee appraisals and productivity.

 

Needless to say, not all employers can get over the idea of not having workers coming into the office on a daily basis. If workers are not sitting at a desk in the office, then they are clearly not working. But with a recent survey in the United States finding that more than 80 percent of business leaders believe that contract workers are more or equally as productive as full-time employees, this attitude is clearly changing.

 

Personally, I am not sure that this trend fills me with great hope and encouragement. For all the benefits, it also leads workers to be on hand for long hours and complicates the work-life balance. On the other hand, this is already the case for a vast range of company employees who are obliged to check and answer company emails, texts and WhatsApps whether they are at work or not.