Freelancer.com Fast 50 Job Trends for Q4 2011 Shows the Technology Industry In Full Swing

SYDNEY, Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Freelancer.com, the world's largest outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace, today announced its 50 fastest growing online job categories for the last quarter of 2011.

The Freelancer.com Fast 50 charts the fastest moving job categories quarter by quarter, and provides an up-to-date account of jobs being done over the Internet.

Chief Executive, Matt Barrie, said, "As the largest outsourcing marketplace in the world with over 3 million freelancers and 1.3 million jobs posted to date, the Freelancer.com Fast 50 provides unparalleled and timely insights into online job trends, success and failure in the product marketplace and market share in application support for a range of companies, technologies and products."

134,820 jobs were posted in the fourth quarter, up from 114,000 jobs in Q3.

"Overall, online projects were up over 18% for the quarter. The sophistication and nature of jobs continues to amaze us as we see jobs outsourced in areas as diverse as Astrophysics, Genetic Engineering and Industrial Design," Barrie added.

TOP TRENDS FOR Q4 2011

• AdSense jobs pull back after surging in Q3: Google's Panda Update decimated content writing jobs in Q2 2011, before recovering strongly in Q3 2011. These jobs have pulled back in Q4 2011 with Google AdSense jobs plummeting 21% (from 1,051 to 826), scoring the biggest fall of all jobs for the quarter. Google AdSense topped the leader board for risers in Q3 2011, having risen 76%. Other big risers from last quarter were flat or fell; Ghostwriting jobs down 21% to 3,382, Reviews up 9% to 2,251, Travel Writing down 47%.
• Android takes off again in Q4. After a slow Q3, Android jobs rocketed up 33% (to 2,454) in Q4. Apple iPhone jobs grew 18% (to 3,682). By the end of 2012, Android should be close to overtaking the iPhone for the rate of development of new applications. Apple iPad jobs rose 22% (to 1,692). Blackberry jobs were flat, up 2%, but with volumes too low to register on the Fast 50. As reported before, Symbian and Windows phone applications do not even move the dial. Nokia was down 19% to insignificant numbers. Amazon Kindle was up 27% but again on insignificant volumes.
• Data Entry jobs exploded in Q4 up 54% (from 10,146 to 15,651 jobs) topping the leader board as the technology industry and information services boom. We saw tremendous growth in these jobs as entrepreneurial startups hired freelance teams to conduct market research, competitive analysis and build a huge variety of information services. Similarly Microsoft Excel jobs were up 51% (to 7,056), Data Processing up 39% (to 6,705).
• Programming jobs likewise exploded in Q4 2011 as the tech industry soared. Q4 2011 saw a strong increase in applications developed in C++ (up 38% to 2,214), Java (up 36% to 2,513), C (up 27% to 1,953), .NET (up 27% to 346) and C# (up 20% to 2,124), although PHP still dominates the web (up 13% to 28,872).
• HTML5 continues to grow strongly, up 41% (to 1,585), trouncing Flash (up 6% to 2,955). As predicted last Fast 50, HTML5 will overtake Flash by mid-2012.
• Cloud Computing Jobs are still way too low to register on the Fast 50, but it is interesting to note that Amazon Web Services Jobs were up 24% (to 314), Google App Engine is experiencing lacklustre interest (down 19% to 151), and no-one at all is interested in Microsoft Azure (down 32% to a paltry 13 jobs).
• Other Winners & Losers: Facebook (up 29% to 7,947) and Social Networking (up 26% to 5,276) jobs continued to fly. Google+ jobs appeared for the first time, but were too low to register on the Fast 50 as yet (0 to 279). MySpace fell 35% and off the edge of the Earth.

FREELANCER FAST 50 (FASTEST MOVERS) FOR Q4 2011                                        

This data was extracted from 134,820 jobs posted on Freelancer.com in Q4 2011. The Freelancer.com Freelancer Fast 50 is the leading gauge of online hiring trends. The Fast 50 is calculated by looking at the fastest rising and falling job sectors on Freelancer.com where job volumes exceed 1,000 in either of the two quarters. In this quarter, only AdSense jobs were the only job category of scale to register a negative movement.

About Freelancer
Webby award winning Freelancer.com is the largest outsourcing marketplace in the world. Through Freelancer.com, businesses connect with over 3 million independent professionals from all over the world. Employers can hire freelancers in areas such as software, writing, data entry and design, right through to engineering and the sciences, sales & marketing and accounting & legal services. The average job is under US$200, making Freelancer.com extremely cost effective for small businesses, which often need a wide variety of jobs to be done, but cannot justify the expense of hiring full time.

http://www.freelancer.com 

SOURCE Freelancer.com