The Role of Middle Age Malaise on the Booming Freelance Workforce

I was asked recently about the role of "middle-age malaise" on the growth of freelancing.

In short, older workers with "the blahs" is one of the biggest hidden drivers of the booming "gig economy." 

And I don't mean ride share drivers and house cleaners. I mean what a 2012 HBR called "The Rise of the Supertemp." Despite the headlines about app-driven personal services work, most of the action in the gig economy involves highly skilled professionals who are choosing to sell those skills on a project basis rather than in the job market. 

Many are doing so in order to find meaning in their work, to beat the blahs and to find new challenges and opportunities.

The workforce data we track at Nation1099 shows that 11 percent of the U.S. workforce is full-time freelance, and this segment is growing four times faster than the workforce overall. 

If we were all counted as under one employer, "self employment" would be the largest employer in the U.S.

The data tells one story very clearly -- the biggest driver of the growth of freelancing is low employee engagement and a work-life balance that is out of whack. 

For example, various studies show that: only 30 percent of U.S workers say they are engaged at work; excessive overtime and a lack of remote work and flexible work options are the main reasons people leave jobs; 74 percent of U.S. office workers say they would quit their job for another that allows them to work remotely.

Meanwhile, among people who are already freelance, the fastest growing segment is the highest-earning segment. About 20 percent of professional freelancers earn $100,000 per year or more. 

Two-thirds of freelancers say they make more than they did in their old job. 

Over 70 percent say they strongly prefer this way of working, and more than half say they wouldn't go back to a W-2 role at any price. 

There are 13 million W-2 employees who are moonlighting in the gig economy, and more than one third of them say they are considering a jailbreak from employment. That's 4.7 million potential new freelancers, according to a study by the Freelancer's Union and Upwork. 

The study also found that, compared to traditional employees, freelancers feel more engaged, respected, empowered and excited to start their day.

What does this have to do with "middle age malaise?" The data on generational breakdown of the gig economy doesn't tell a clear story, but it would be simplistic to say that it's a youth movement. Freelancers are distributed evenly across the population by age. 

Age doesn't explain whether or not people freelance so much as why they freelance. 

It appears that younger workers are more likely to freelance on the side for extra income. Older workers are more likely to freelance for the improved work-life balance and to take ownership of their careers. 

One survey showed that workers 35 and older are less likely to return from freelancing to a role-based job. Other studies by LinkedIn and PwC have shown that Gen X and older workers are much more interested in full-time freelancing.

Why are younger workers looking for income on the side? Short answer: because they can and and because they need to. New gig economy technologies are releasing pent up demand that may have always been there, and the well-documented financial butt kicking of middle class workers in the last thirty years probably impacts early career workers with young families more.

The data supporting this conjecture is all still pretty thin, but my working thesis is that a.) there is a new "career freelancer" role emerging among the growing number of people who have had it with the lousy work-life balance of most W-2 roles and that b.) Gen X and boomers are a bigger part of that group than you might expect.