In recent years there has been a paradigm shift in the workforce domain.

This was extremely accelerated during the COVID pandemic.

I’m talking about the freelance industry or the so called Gig sector.

A 2019 study by Mastercard estimated that the global gig economy generates $204 billion in gross volume. In the United States, it has been predicted that by 2027, the country may have more “giggers” than non-gig workers.

According to a 2020 report from Intuit, 25-30 percent of the U.S. workforce is uncertain, and more than 80 percent of large corporations plan to substantially increase their use of a flexible workforce in the coming years.

Furthermore, according to a survey published on Bloomberg, more than 1,000 hiring managers implies that 40.7 million Americans expect to be working remotely by 2026. That’s 4.5 million more than in a previous poll in the third quarter of 2020 -- and about 21 million above pre-pandemic levels!

Study from Wharton conducted during this ‘work from home’ huge experiment forced by the pandemic, showed that across the economy, productivity has actually remained stable during the pandemic, with productivity even increasing in many companies.

People simply don’t want to return to work, the reasons are:

The federal government added $600 more per week to unemployment benefits already provided by the states. Even as states have worked to cut benefits, the wages received are still comparable to ones at a regular job.
Inflation rate is higher than the Wages growth rate – reduced motivation to return to work
People are worried about returning to a more rigid work schedule.
Some people have truly thrived with the newfound flexibility of working remotely.
People are worried that microaggressions at work will worsen your mental health.
People are simply still worried about getting exposed to COVID-19.

For many, the pandemic has been a wake-up call that revealed how much we actually neglected our self-care before now. Now, many of us have gotten a taste of better balance and aren’t ready to give it up. We want our freedom – we want to be freelancers.

Currently there are two public traded Gig companies: Upwork $UPWK and Fivver $FVRR.

Here are a comparison table between the two:

Company	market cap	P/S	EV/S	Revenue	Revenue Grow
Upwork	6.89	15.5	15.63	440.7	41.90%
Fivver	6.35	23.51	24.97	251.81	59.70%

It’s true that Fivver is growing at faster rate than Upwork, but it just can’t justify the financial ratios difference between them. Fivver, simply put, is much more expensive than Upwork.

Don’t get me wrong, Fivver is a great company but it still mainly focuses on End user / small projects, while Upwork is primarily about mid/large scale projects, which is what this paradigm shift is all about.

Upwork has collaborations with major Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft, Samsung and Zoom, as more commercial giants turning to online freelancing platforms to find knowledge workers.

So what do you think? Upwork to the moon and beyond?