Freelancers will certainly have a decisive role to play in the labor market as businesses wade back toward post-pandemic normalcy. 2019 survey data from the hiring platform giant Upwork found respondents identifying talent scarcity and access to in-demand skills as core challenges for hiring.
Subsequent findings from that survey in 2020, however, marked an important paradigm shift: Nearly half of all reporting organizations had implemented hiring freezes, and another 39% had either already laid off employees or expected to do so in the future. Likewise, employers anticipated by then that only 53% of their laid-off workforce would be rehired, while only 10% of businesses reported a hiring increase in light of the pandemic.