A new report carried out by Econsultancy and United Studios has discovered just how important freelancers are these days. The Digital Outsourcing Survey Report 2012 has shown that digital companies are making use of freelancers more and more. It turns out 57% of these companies are now outsourcing work, with freelancers mopping up the bulk of it.

It seems the unstoppable spread of smartphones has played a large part in this. Mobile application development has been the most outsourced service overall. Flash work has been the most popular production skill with nearly 100% of agencies saying that Flash design and build skills are the most requested.

Why is freelancer demand increasing?

One of the most common reasons given was to “manage fluctuations in work-stream effectively”. Annoying corporate-speak aside, companies need freelancers to deal with unexpected work or, more specifically, a sudden increase in workload. Of course it would make no sense to hire permanent staff to deal with a temporary issue and so freelancers get to fill the void.

Another reason is that some companies just don’t have staff skilled in the right areas for their needs. As mentioned before, the increase in smartphone usage has meant a lot of businesses have had to spend time looking at this increasingly important sector. If a company has work to be done within it, chances are they won’t have a specialist so it makes perfect sense to outsource the work to someone who is.

It’s unsurprising really, especially when you consider mobile application development. What company would hire an app developer before it was necessary, and what company would keep one on once their app is complete? None. So that’s why super-amazing freelancers get the jobs!

This is great news for all digital freelancers out there. It shows that more companies are considering them a viable and smart choice for solving skills shortages. Clearly businesses are becoming increasingly aware of just how skilled some of these workers are in their field and that they’re also willing to pay decent wages for their expertise (the average daily rate for a Microsoft .NET programmer is £640 according to the report).

Even though it’s mostly doom and gloom economically these days, the world of freelancing seems to be in relatively fine health. Alongside this new report, the Freelance Industry Report 2012 recently showed 90% of freelancers are happier than if they were in a regular job.

What a lucky bunch eh?

Photo by Sean MacEntee