“Freelancers are increasingly the backbone of the workforce revolution.”
That’s one of the major takeaways of Upwork’s research from early 2025 about the “rise of freelancers” in today’s “dynamic economy.” As we close out 2025, this article will explore how companies stand to benefit from the rise of the freelance worker, including flexibility in hiring and scaling, all while keeping costs low.
Americans are increasingly turning to freelance work
The skilled workforce has embraced flexible work for numerous reasons, including autonomy (contractors who use Wingspan have spoken about this to us), economic pressure, and the ease of taking on remote work. Freelance work does not solely mean gig work, which a recent Goldman Sachs report estimates that between 5-15% of the population participates in. Indeed, a majority of younger freelancers do not see part-time work solely as a stopgap or a way to make extra money – an Upwork survey showed that “53% of Gen Z freelancers work full-time hours on freelance projects, abandoning traditional 9-to-5 jobs and seeing freelancing as a fulfilling career alternative.”
These full-time freelancers are often highly skilled and highly paid, as an MBO Partners survey found that over 5.6 million independent workers earned $100,000+ in 2025, up from 4.7 million in 2024. Not surprisingly, many of those high earners are working in fast-growing fields, like AI and crypto. Upwork found that in 2025, some of the highest paying freelance jobs are as machine learning engineers, cybersecurity developers, AI or prompt engineers, and blockchain developers.
Flexibility for the contractor… and your company
Contractors often cite flexibility as one of the primary reasons why freelance work appeals to them. That flexibility in the workforce can be beneficial to companies that need to scale up and down based on economic or seasonal factors. Priorities can change quickly for businesses looking to exponentially grow – AI investment wasn’t exactly a top priority for many companies prior to a few years ago, but a recent McKinsey report notes that ”92 percent [of companies] say they expect to boost spending on AI in the next three years.” Businesses that are able to adapt fastest to these ongoing paradigm shifts will have a clear competitive advantage. And to do that, they’ll need a skilled, flexible workforce that’s ready for the challenge.
Lower fixed costs for highly skilled workers
Hiring contractors offers companies the ability to turn fixed labor costs like salaries and benefits into variable costs. Instead of training current, full-time employees to help with a project that requires specialized knowledge, it’s increasingly easier to turn to freelancers who already possess the desired skill set, as they can immediately hit the ground running on projects with the highest priority.
In April 2025, the Upwork Research Institute released a Future Workforce Index to help “determine the readiness of skilled workers of all kinds to take on what’s next, across a range of dimensions.” The Institute found that while skilled full-time employees and freelancers are “picking up new skills all the time,” freelancers use a “wider variety of formal, experiential, and social learning opportunities free to pursue a wider variety of formal, experiential, and social learning opportunities, leaning particularly on self-directed learning, formal certification programs, and apprenticeships and mentorships.” This can make all the difference in bleeding-edge projects that can help supercharge a company’s growth.
Now there’s a solution to automate the entire contractor lifecycle
If you’re planning to hire contractors in 2026, Wingspan is built specifically for the operational challenges you’ll face. Wingspan’s platform automates the contractor lifecycle: onboarding, rapid payments, tax compliance, contractor verification, billing, and more – all in one place.
See why leading operations teams trust Wingspan to handle weekly payments, 1099s, and vendor support at volume. Request a Demo →
.jpg)