How Freelancers and Small Businesses Are Helping One Another Thrive
Not only are freelancers making enough to earn a good salary, they’re also helping small businesses grow
By Jared Hecht
You can’t read an economic report these days that doesn’t mention the gig economy or the “side hustle.” While a traditional job provides the primary income for many people, more and more of us have a freelance gig — using sites like Upwork, Guru, and PeoplePerHour to find work.
According to new data from a report by my company Fundera, a marketplace for small-business financial solutions, hundreds of thousands of people have freelance jobs in fields ranging from design and writing to accounting and data science — adding up to millions of freelancers, some of whom make more than $60 an hour for their services. In fact, a large chunk in particularly lucrative fields make over six figures.
Not bad for a side hustle.
The most surprising part of the data isn’t that some very talented people can make a good deal of money working in a field they’re skilled in. It’s that many of these freelancers make their living working with small businesses.
We often think of small businesses as teetering on the brink of failure. Many of…
