Businesses will spend $930 million on independent workers in 2014, study says

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Thinking about going freelance? Well, it might be a good time to get started.

Business Insider recently wrote about a new Elance-oDesk study suggesting that businesses will spend $930 million dollars on hiring independent workers globally ($500 million nationally) in 2014, no doubt aided by the rise of online gig networks. That’s a growth of 50%, compounded annually over the past 5 years.

That’s 2.7 million job postings covering 2,500 different skills.

Thinking about adding a new skill to your resume? The study mentions that social media optimization, mobile advertising, customer service, 3D modeling and animation, and data science as some of the many skills with growing demand, while business card design, facebook development, SEM, banner ad design, and infographics have only seen decreasing demand.

This seems to be in line with the rise of solo “non-employer businesses,” which now account for 75 percent of all U.S. businesses.

Check out the full study right here.