Thai freelancers are among the top 10 globally in terms of hires via Freelancer.com, the world's largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace.
Local freelancers earned average revenue of US$253 per project on the platform last year, Marko Zitko, communications and investor relations manager of Freelancer.com, told the Bangkok Post.
The global increase in the cost of living is expected to push the number of new freelancers and generative artificial intelligence (AI) jobs to grow exponentially this year, he said.
Freelancing in Thailand on the platform is up 50% over the last 12 months, Mr Zitko said.
The number of new Thai users on the platform has grown from 7,000 to more than 11,500 over the last 12 months. The growth has accelerated in recent months and is beginning to peak.
The platform has 67 million users across the world. Over 170,000 Thai users registered on Freelancer.com, compared with almost half a million Malaysian users, almost a million users in the Philippines and almost 2 million in Indonesia.
Thailand has a lower number of users and a low English proficiency, said Mr Zitko.
The No.1 registered job for Thai freelancers is translation, followed by website design, website development, data entry and writing. The top countries hiring Thai freelancers are India, the US and Australia.
Thailand ranks 10th among the countries whose nationals are being hired. Thai employers aren't necessarily hiring Thai freelancers, despite their high skills.
Globally there were 6.6 million new users on the platform, up 13.6% from 2022. The top registered skills were data entry, copywriting, typing, copy typing, article writing, logo design, Microsoft office usage and translation.
The top projects on the platform include those related to graphic design, web design, Photoshop, logo design, article writing, Wordpress and JavaScript.
The biggest trend of 2022 was the surge in tech and IT-related jobs as a result of mass tech layoffs.
According to online tracker Layoffs.fyi, there were 159,846 tech layoffs in 2022. These layoffs, which accelerated in May 2022, contributed to the increase in tech-related jobs across the Freelancer.com platform.
While Android app development dominated jobs in 2022 and was ranked the fastest growing job, employers have been turning to Freelancer.com to support niche, highly specialised technology projects, such as the use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), which is a group of technologies for web app development, and projects related to the application programming interface (API), which allows software programs to communicate with each other.
However, in the second quarter last year, these jobs declined in correlation with layoffs slowing down.
Mr Zitko says that freelancing in Thailand on the platform is up 50% over the last 12 months.
GENERATIVE AI SKILLS
A total of 144 new skills and job categories were added to the platform in 2022, ranging from generative AI to e-sports. Among the most sought-after skills are those related to AI technologies including ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and DALL·E.
Mr Zitko cited the findings of the platform's Fast 50 index for the second quarter of 2023 which analysed more than 280,000 jobs posted to Freelancer.com between April and June. The fastest growing freelance jobs in that period were creative writing, up 58% year-on-year, user interface design, up 52%, Twitter marketing, up 41%, photography, up 40%, and writing (Microsoft Word), up 38%.
"Despite having access to freely available generative AI tools, employers are turning to on-demand freelancers to help write creative content for their websites and blogs. AI still cannot replace creativity," said Mr Zitko.
He cited the platform's recent survey with 7,872 respondents that found 73% used generative AI tools in their work. It found that 47.5% are very concerned AI would take their jobs, while nearly 21% are not concerned.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT gained the most popularity with 64% of 8,618 respondents using this tool, followed by GitHub Copilot at 9.4%, Bard/Bing Chat at 9.2% and DALL·E/Midjourney at 8.9%.
Corporations use Freelancer.com to crowdsource new ideas from its open innovation programme, said Mr Zitko.
During the pandemic downturn, more freelancers and employers migrated to the platform to generate income to deal with higher living costs, he said.
Mr Zitko said new business ventures are debuting on the platform this year, which typically look for jobs such as logo design, graphic design and website design.
