The online freelance economy represents a shift in how labor markets operate. The world is still in the early stages of the online freelance economy, with a multi-industry and multi-decade global shift affecting how businesses find talent and how people want to work.
In today’s economy, knowledge is a key driver of productivity, and by using Upwork you can access people that acquire specific knowledge to grow your business. Whether you’re searching for a developer for a blockchain project or a graphic designer to build your company logo, Upwork enables you to access talent across the world, safely, and on demand.
When you look back to the first and second industrial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, the industrial economy moved workers from farms to factories. The third industrial revolution of the 20th century created the knowledge economy and moved workers from factories to office buildings.
The World Economic Forum believes that the global economy is now undergoing the fourth industrial revolution, fueled by rapid technological advances. One of the defining features of the fourth industrial revolution is the transformation of how and where work gets done, as work is increasingly no longer constrained by location. In the fourth industrial revolution, instead of the worker moving to the workplace, we are seeing that work is moving to the worker—collaboration is less constrained than ever before by physical proximity and geographic borders, particularly for highly-skilled professionals.
