The freelance economy: What it means for hiring in 2025

The freelance shift continues to accelerate, and as businesses navigate economic uncertainties in 2025 and beyond, more leaders are turning to open or contingent workforce models to drive flexibility, reduce costs, and maintain productivity.

A more open workforce can bring several benefits if your business is looking at freelance and contracting hires. As companies prepare for 2025, the discussion around freelance and contractors is more active than ever.

Want to hire a freelancer or contractor? Salt sources outstanding digital talent around the world!

What is the freelance shift?

The rise of freelance work is not new in conversations about the future of work and digital transformation. A decade ago, Accenture predicted that at least one Fortune 500 company would be staffed entirely by open talent below the C-suite level.

Now, post-pandemic and well into 2025, this shift has only accelerated. As Jon Younger Ph.D. notes in Forbes, the freelance economy is evolving faster than anticipated, reshaping how businesses access talent.

In uncertain times, the benefits of a flexible, open workforce are undeniable. Experts like Steve King of Emergent Research and John Winsor of the Center for the Transformation of Work emphasise that the most effective workforce combines stability, specialised expertise, and agility to respond to both opportunities and challenges.

What the stats say:

• 73% of tech companies have integrated teams of freelancers and employees (a.team)
  
• 71% say that bringing on freelancers or independent workers gives their business greater agility during times of economic uncertainty (a.team)
  
• 80% of corporate leaders plan to increase their use of freelancers during periods of uncertainty (Fiverr)
  
• Nearly 70% of workers surveyed by MBO Partners, featured in the Harvard Business Review,  reported feeling, “more secure working independently.” A significant increase from 32% in 2011 and 53% in 2019.
  
• Over half of Gen Z workers are engaging in freelance work, with 53% of them freelancing full-time.

The benefits of hiring freelance and contract workers

There are lots of reasons businesses hire freelancers and contractors – and it very much depends on their business needs and goals, however, there are themes that are useful to understand:

1. Specialist skills: many of the freelancers and consultants Salt works with are experts in their specific fields, which is why they’ve set up an independent business. It’s a quick way to benefit from expert experience when it’s needed – particularly in digital-focused projects.
   
2. Speeding progress: freelancers and consultants often provide high-quality work fast – because they are hired with a specific task or project in mind. They are able to focus their key skills and expertise to make progress – where employees are spread across multiple functions.
   
3. Large, diverse talent pool: companies using freelancers and contractors benefit from a wide and diverse global talent pool, and if working with a company like Salt, that pool is vetted and verified as having concrete and needed Digital skills that can make all the difference to reaching that all-important milestone on time!
   
4. Risk management: often when a leader or specialist leaves a company progress on a project or product is completely halted and finding a permanent replacement can take considerable time. With contractors and freelancers, you’re investing only for a period of time – and a wide talent pool if an individual does leave before their work is complete.
   
5. Flexibility and scale: especially in uncertain economic times, launching a business or product, or launching in a new market, is risky. Companies can offset that risk by working with freelancers or contractors, so they aren’t locked in by a permanent salary and cost.
   
6. Diversifying your perspective: you can increase diversity, which ensures new perspectives and ideas to inform your business, with freelancers from different backgrounds, in different countries around the world.
   
7. On-demand: freelancers can be hired at any time, and quickly. Flexible schedules and hours mean they can work overtime and over the weekend – in sprints or short bursts – that see the goal completed on time. This is all agreed upon and negotiated ahead of time, unlike unplanned employee overtime which eventually takes its toll on mental health and productivity.

Want to become a freelancer that travels the world? Read Rita Batalha’s story for inspiration and advice.