----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 11:25 AM
Subject: [Futurework] FW: Wired: So Much
for the Freelance Economy
Meanwhile back in the workplace things are not going as
forecasted.
arthur
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So
Much for the Freelance Economy
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59003,00.html
By
Amit Asaravala
The nation's job market will seem even smaller for
America's 25 million freelancers next month when job matchmaker Guru.com shuts
its doors.
Guru Worldwide, which runs Guru.com, announced in an e-mail
to its registered "gurus," or freelancers, that it would shut down on June
30.
"After serving the needs of job seekers and employers for the past
four years," read the brief message, "we at Guru regret to announce that we
will no longer be matching talent with employers effective June 30th,
2003."
Another recruiting software company, Unicru, bought Guru last
year. As part of the acquisition, Unicru had always planned to close down
Guru.com, a Unicru spokesman said. But the purchase hadn't been disclosed
publicly, and the announcement surprised many in the freelance industry who
had come to rely on the site for job leads.
"It caught us off guard,"
said Diane Connell, an independent Web designer who estimates that she and her
husband obtain nearly 50 percent of their contracts with the help of Guru.com.
"The only way we found out was by the e-mail notice. There wasn't any
forewarning that we could see."
Connell is just one of many private
contractors who feel they are running out of places to look for work.
Freelance message forums are dotted with postings from individuals seeking
advice on how to reel in more projects. And a handful of Guru competitors such
as Ants.com and eWanted.com have already shut down because of a dearth of job
postings.
The trend suggests that predictions of an economy run
by freelancers -- such as those made by Daniel Pink in his book Free Agent
Nation, and by MIT's Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher in their 1998 paper,
"The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy" -- were shortsighted.
In 2000,
research firm EPIC/MRA of Lansing, Michigan, estimated that 41 percent of all
Americans would be private contractors by 2010. But today, the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics reports that self-employment numbers have not grown at all
over the past four years.
Meanwhile, the number of available
jobs continues to decline, pushing freelancers to compete for fewer projects
at lower rates.
Freelancers now crowd the few remaining project
marketplaces, resulting in situations like that at Emoonlighter.com, where a
reported 316,000 contractors vie for jobs from just 30,000
businesses.
Hans Bukow, CEO of eWork Exchange, says he has seen IT
staffing opportunities drop off by at least 50 percent since 1999. He readily
admits that his company's marketplace is no longer functional because of such
dips in available projects.
"There are really no jobs in the Exchange
right now," said Bukow. "Sure, some people can use it to find contracts, but
not in a sustainable manner."
In order to cope with the changing
market, Bukow is shifting eWork's mission away from serving freelancers and
more toward providing businesses with automated staffing software.
The
move may further disenfranchise freelancers who say that the current buyer's
market already favors businesses, but Bukow believes the shift is a necessary
evolution for the industry.
The sentiment is shared by executives at
Elance, a Sunnyvale, California, services procurement company that takes its
name from the Malone and Laubacher paper about the e-lance economy.
"A
lot of contractors don't realize that corporations have to comply with a
number of restrictions on hiring," said Elance vice president Tim Reed.
Software will help companies better manage those restrictions so they can open
up more of their business to outsourcing.
"We will see an e-lance
economy," said Reed. "It's just a matter of how quickly companies can manage
the change process."
Unfortunately, for freelancers that change isn't
coming quickly enough.
"There are definitely more people looking for
this type of work than there are jobs available," said Connell, adding that
companies are using this to their advantage to negotiate low fees for high
skill sets. "It's becoming more
dog-eat-dog."