Excited to announce a new report today: Not Just Tech. https://www.upwork.com/mc/documents/Not_Just_Tech_Report_May_2021.pdf A quick thread:

There is a lot of debate about which companies will stay remote & also which will embrace remote freelancing. One argument is that this will be mostly tech companies, everyone else will go back to the office.

This report is about why that is wrong. Remote workers and remote freelancers are in every industry. Even in a sector like manufacturing, the BLS shows 20% of workers were remote in January. Utilities 29%, mining/extraction 22%.

Why is this happening? BLS data shows the most common remote jobs in more traditional industries are largely in marketing, communications, administrative, computers and programming, and science and engineering jobs.

As the economy has become more service oriented, professional services have become widespread and, as a result, these jobs exist in every industry. Even in the construction, 10.5% of workers are in prof svcs, around 1.2 million jobs.

Looking more broadly, I estimate that 37% of jobs in “non-tech industries” are in professional services, which suggests they have the potential of being done remotely or by a remote freelancer.

Similar trends can be found in remote freelancing data. Looking at Upwork’s 100 largest non-tech clients, we can see the wide variety of professional services work they hire for.

Overall, thinking about the rapid growth in remote freelancing and remote work, it is mistaken to assume this won’t affect a lot of companies.

***This is a professional services economy now*** https://www.upwork.com/mc/documents/Not_Just_Tech_Report_May_2021.pdf

End tweet storm.