Here at ExactCPA we've used Elance and Odesk from time to time and with that in mind, we read GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and BRENDA CRONIN for the Wall St. Journal write: The Internet changed how people do their jobs. Now it's fueling a generation of freelancers.
Across her career, Brigitte Ebert, a mother of three in San Mateo, Calif., worked nine-to-five jobs like retail sales. Last year, seeking more time with her children, she started picking up odd jobs on TaskRabbit Inc., a website where individuals hire helpers for microtasks.
This spring, an early test of a new TaskRabbit service connected her with consistent, 10-hour-a-week freelance work as office-food manager at tech startup Platfora Inc., refilling coffee cups and wrangling snacks for engineers. That service for businesses, which TaskRabbit launched last week, let Platfora shop for Ms. Ebert's part-time help the same way it might buy supplies on eBay Inc. EBAY +1.60%
It also has given Ms. Ebert the chance to be a new kind of corporate temp worker, placed not through staffing firms but online. "It gives me the freedom to choose my hours, but within a schedule that works for me and the company," says Ms. Ebert, who is in her 40s.
TaskRabbit executives hope to tap a shift in the U.S. economy toward freelance and "micro-entrepreneurial" work. They aren't alone: websites and apps such as the digital-work marketplace Elance Inc., ride-on-demand service Lyft Inc., and handmade and vintage marketplace Etsy Inc. are growing as they connect workers with Internet-savvy employers and customers.
Meanwhile, workers are building their own reputations and portfolios online at sites likeLinkedIn Corp. LNKD -2.66% "Five to 10 years from now, how people manage their careers and find what they're going to do is going to look radically different," says TaskRabbit's chief revenue officer, Anne Raimondi.
"We've had subcontracting forever, [but] today what's new is you can do it with a laptop." adds Dane Stangler, director of research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., who estimates that about 10% of U.S. workers are freelancers.
The shift toward freelancing—and the growth of Internet startups that are fueling the trend—comes as technology has automated many rote jobs and enabled a more efficient market for ad hoc projects. Firms are benefiting from lower costs to locate workers with specific or unusual skills, and workers are spotting new opportunities.
The website Elance, which lets freelancers bid for jobs like programming or designing that they can complete over the Internet, has attracted more than 500,000 businesses and two million freelancers, about a third of whom are based in the U.S.
"Businesses are discovering that some of the same efficiency of e-commerce can be applied to hiring," says Chief Executive Fabio Rosati. Elance is on track to pay workers about $300 million this year, up from $200 million last year.
Across nine cities, TaskRabbit now has more than 11,000 vetted workers, over 75% of whom have bachelor's degrees. About 10% make a full-time living on the site, and 40% are self-employed. Many are stay-at-home mothers or people seeking to supplement their income from another job.
Ms. Raimondi says the company, founded in 2008, is seeking to widen its slice of the market to include outplacement services because businesses—some 16,000 of them since February—are already posting job listings to the site.
TaskRabbit now lets employers browse candidate profiles and reviews by employers as well as chat online with prospects, adding a fee of 26% on top of the new employee's salary, or about half what traditional temp services charge. TaskRabbit also offers such services as filing W2 tax forms and providing workers' compensation and unemployment insurance.
All of this appealed to Anne Ricci, the Platfora manager who hired Ms. Ebert. Ms. Ricci says she wasn't ready to commit to adding another full-timer to the 50-person company and didn't want to use a temp agency.
All the activity has job-search websites and temp-worker firms taking note and taking action. Staffing giant ManpowerGroup Inc. MAN +1.86% is working with OnForce Inc., a site that matches independent contractors with tech tasks, such as setting up a home theater or troubleshooting computer problems. And Kelly Services Inc.,KELYA +2.06% which has placed temporary workers since 1946, doesn't broker micro-taskers now but "we're looking at that," says CEO Carl T. Camden.
Not everyone is enthusiastic, however. Individual microtask sites have their place, says Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, but the trend of stripping work down to discrete, short-term projects without benefits for workers is troubling.
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based nonprofit helps its more than 200,000 members post and find jobs and get health insurance and other services. TaskRabbit and others might be "great for kids in high school or college to pick up some work," Ms. Horowitz says. "But as a human being, for a person caring about policy or labor conditions, you have to say, what is happening here?"
A TaskRabbit spokesman says the site makes sure that workers "are not just satisfied but happy with the experience." And he adds, "Benefits are something we are constantly exploring."
Ms. Ebert, who works through TaskRabbit at other cooking, delivery and administrative jobs as well as Platfora, agrees there are drawbacks. "It's not an easy way to get rich," she says. She doesn't earn a full-time living as a TaskRabbit, she adds, though she thinks she could if she tried. She also gets her health insurance through her spouse.
Still, Ms. Ebert likes working the way she does because "it gives the person who doesn't run their own business the chance to be self-employed." Recently, she persuaded her sister to become a TaskRabbit, too.
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