There’s no doubt freelancing will play a major role in our future working lives. Over 57 million Americans took on freelance work in some capacity–that’s 36% of the U.S. workforce, up from 53 million in 2014. With a rising tide of people flooding into the freelance economy, our fourth annual “Freelancing in America” study, released earlier this month by Upwork and the Freelancers Union, now predicts freelancers will make up a majority of the U.S. workforce within a decade.
But while many of today’s workers are swapping long commutes, outdated workplace hierarchies, and the nine-to-five grind for the freedom to be their own boss and set their own hours, the fact is that not everyone will.
Traditionally employed workers are on the decline, but that model isn’t about to vanish. After all, plenty of people who do want to freelance fail; not everybody has the skills or temperament to do it successfully. And that’s not to mention all the people who don’t want to freelance and aren’t likely to change their minds. Instead, as I’ve argued before, future work teams may more closely resemble movie crews, with a core unit of traditional employees hiring specialists for results-oriented, project-based work.
With that in mind, there are four key criteria that the successful freelancers of the future will need to possess in order to stay competitive and succeed.