Upwork’s Strategic Embrace of AI Could Push the Stock to $25, According to Experts!

From a company’s perspective, macroeconomic conditions also drive freelance utilization. In a high-inflation, high-interest-rate environment, many firms face budget pressures and headcount freezes. Rather than hire new full-time staff (with the long-term commitments that entails), companies increasingly turn to on-demand talent to “do more with less.” Freelancers become a variable cost that can be scaled up or down as needed. We saw this in late 2022 and 2023: as the economy softened and big tech firms laid off tens of thousands, many of those projects didn’t disappear – instead, companies started bringing in contractors and freelancers to handle work in a more flexible way. Upwork noted that even as tech layoffs occurred, client spend on freelancers in tech categories remained resilient, implying businesses still had work to get done but chose non-employee talent to do it. Now in 2025, with economic volatility persisting, this agile workforce approach is further solidifying. A Zacks analysis highlighted that AI adoption and the shift to skills-based hiring are benefiting staffing and freelance platforms – companies want specific skills on tap, without necessarily adding permanent payroll. In practice, this might mean a retailer quickly hiring a freelance data scientist for a 3-month AI pilot, or a bank engaging a contract UX designer to revamp an app, rather than hiring full-time for those roles.