Upwork: Analysis of Freelancer Success Badges: Difference between revisions

According to Upwork's Chief Economist Adam Ozimek, “One-third of U.S. freelancers on Upwork earn at least $50/hour, which would put them in the top 10% of U.S. wage earners overall.”<ref>https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/21/high-paying-jobs-for-independent-freelance-workers.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9COne%2Dthird%20of%20U.S.%20freelancers,from%20January%20to%20June%202019</ref> That means during layoffs at least one-third of Upwork's U.S freelancers will likely be affected. Clients will likely replace them with freelancers from less developed economies. Luckily, as found out above, high quality freelancers are not concentrated only in U.S. This implies that freelancers from other regions have the potential to take up the work handle by U.S freelancers. The reason for the deviation in the searchable number of high quality freelancers and that given by Upwork is because the company restricted the searchable limit in each category to 5,000 freelancers on the day of our study. Our study found out that the searchable limit differs each day and Upwork has never disclosed how its search algorithm work<ref name=":0" />. However, we believe that the searchable limit does not diverge much from the 5,000 freelancers. Upwork restricts the searchable number of freelancers in order to give each freelancer(no matter the quality) a chance to appear in the search results and get hired<ref name=":0">https://community.upwork.com/t5/Support-Forum/About-not-related-search-results/m-p/1120823

* Upwork rotates the freelancers that appear in the search results every now and then. As such, your freelancer profile can appear in the search results today and fail to appear tommorow.<ref>https://community.upwork.com/t5/Support-Forum/About-not-related-search-results/m-p/1120823↵↵https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Algorithm-how-Upwork-sorts-Freelancers/m-p/135262</ref>. We believe that this will also impact the searchable limit in each job category.