The independent work format is growing faster everyday nowadays, and freelance is a big example of that. According to a research from Freelancers Union, only in 2020, 40% of professionals all over the world decided to work on their own, disconnected from companies. Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic, this number tends to grow much more.
But why would someone make such a choice? In Brazil, some of the reasons why people decided to start working as freelancers are the great rates of unemployment and scarcity of traditional vacancies. However, this tendency is not only due to financial reasons.
The Freelancers Union’s research found out that most of the independent workers, which are mostly relatively young, answered that their choice is mainly because of their feeling of personal improvement, the time flexibility and creative freedom. 70% stated they now have more quality of life. One of the most heated markets for freelancers is in the communication area: designers, journalists, photographers and audio-visual producers are all highly requested professionals. And this tends to expand a lot! More and more, communication companies are opting on hiring professionals for specific projects, temporarily, instead of keeping fixed teams.
More than only an option for unemployed people, freelancing has become a lifestyle. The journalist Celso Unzelte, who also teaches young communicators at Casper Libero University (São Paulo, Brazil), has worked as an independent worker for a long time now: “Freelancing is, above all, a necessity. In my case, I used to work in a website as an editor. In 2001, when the brand closed, I started my career as a freelancer. To this day, I still provide this type of service”, he says.
According to him, there are two sides of being a self-employed worker: “If you don’t like it, you can live with the fact that soon you’ll be done and be able to start over in a new place. On the other hand, you don’t have some registered work benefits, like the thirteenth salary*, vacations and all the labor rights”. This way, it is possible to see that freelance has its pros and cons. “Today, we have a lot of job opportunities, but not so many stable vacancies. We have less safety and more possibilities.”, states Unzelte.
Finally, he leaves a tip for beginners: “To those who seek an internship, I think it is a great opportunity to do different experiments, trying to be introduced to as many fields as possible. But still, it would be a little bit harder to start in an internship as a free worker if you didn’t have previous experience working in a big “safe harbor” before”.
About what is forthcoming, Celso Unzelte states that this type of work will be the future, and concludes by saying that the prospect is that single freelance jobs will increasingly overlap the fixed jobs. However, it would be even better if it was more of a choice than a necessity: “Ideally, I hope that this independent working format would be an option, not the only alternative we have”.
*In Brazil, regularized workers receive a bonus at the end of the year to spend on the holidays, which represents an extra salary in addition to the traditional 12 monthly payments.
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The article above was edited by Giulia Gianolla
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