The freelance job market in the US continues expanding, with many tech skills topping the list of the fastest-growing skills for freelance and gig economy workers in Q1 2019, according to a new report from Upwork.
Access to skills and talent scarcity are among the largest hiring challenges faced by US businesses, particularly in the tech industry, another recent Upwork report found.
SEE: The gig economy: An insider’s guide (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
“Labor markets overall are tightening, and for many skills, employers are increasingly struggling to find available workers in their local areas,” Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork and co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Social Contract, said in a press release. “As a result, the array of skills employers are finding through digital platforms is growing, including technical skills like Hadoop and Kubernetes as well as non-technical skills such as taxation and urban planning.”
The 20 fastest-growing freelance skills in Q1 2019 saw more than 170% year-over-year growth, while demand for the top 10 skills grew more than 370% year-over-year, the report found.
Here are the 20 fastest-growing freelance skills of Q1 2019 (you can compare them to the Q4 2018 results as well):
- US taxation
- Hadoop
- Robotic process automation (RPA)
- Explainer videos
- Computer aided manufacturing
- Financial planning
- Urban design
- Software documentation
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Geospatial
- Julia development
- Kubernetes
- Magento
- Employee training
- Shopify templates
- Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
- Vue.js framework
- Leadership development
- Architectural rendering
- Podcasting
The list demonstrates how businesses are beginning to embrace automation, with RPA earning a spot on the list for the first time, the report noted. The inclusion of programming language Julia also highlights its rising popularity among developers. Hadoop is among the top skills needed by data scientists, who are also in increasingly high demand by companies across industries.
For more, check out 7 companies hiring remote freelance developers, engineers, and data scientists right now on TechRepublic.
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