Upwork: Analysis of Freelancer Success Badges

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See also: Upwork:Revenue Breakdown article (Includes Revenue from Freelancers)

Overview

• The number of searchable high quality freelancers is enough to handle more than 50% of open jobs in Upwork platform.
• Searchable high quality freelancers are also present in developing countries in large numbers.
• Major job categories in the platform have a higher number of searchable high quality freelancers.

Introduction

According to Upwork, top rated freelancers alone represent 10% of freelancers in the platform. Given that Upwork claims to have over 12 million freelancers that would be around 1.2 million freelancers. However, the searchable number of high quality freelancers is what matters the most as these are the most active freelancers in the platform. We have explained below how a freelancer can fail to appear in the search results.

Our objectives were to:

1. Understand where these high quality freelancers are coming from. If they are not concentrated in U.S only, that will be an advantage to the platform during macro weakness as clients can shift hiring to less developed countries(eg India and Philippines) where wages is low.
2. Find out if the main job categories; Web, mobile and software development, design and creative, sales and marketing and admin support, have sufficient number of high quality freelancers. These jobs account for more than 70% of open jobs in the platform. It would be a disadvantage to the platform if majority of clients can not access high quality freelancers.
3. Find the approximate total number of searchable freelancers and assess if they are sufficient to cover the jobs posted by clients.

Definitions

For the purpose of this analysis we defined "high quality" freelancers as those freelancers who have an established track record with rising talent, top rated and top rated plus badges. In order to reach those badges freelancers needs to achieve the following criteria according to upwork:

• Rising talent. As a rising talent you need to 1) Complete projects on time and as promised to client 2) Regularly submit proposals to projects that match your skill set 3) Demonstrate various activity metrics. A good profile and background is advantageous.
• Top rated: As top rated you need in addition 1) A job success score of over 90% 2) Maintained Rising Talent status or a Job Success Score of at least 90% for at least 13 of the last 16 weeks 3) 12-month earnings of at least $1,000
• Top rated plus: As top rated plus in addition you need to 1) have total earnings over $10,000 in the past 12 months

We chose that definition, because from the experience of freelancers we know, that it can be hard to get a job without these badges as it is harder for a client to assess the skill level of a new freelancer on Upwork. It is important to note that a portion of new freelancers on Upwork will reach the "high quality" criteria over time. In addition that definition does not capture all "high quality" freelancers as freelancers can lose those badges because of things that don't have anything to do with quality. For instance, a top rated freelancer can lose his or her badge if job success score falls below 90% because lower-value jobs in their profile outweighted higher-value jobs. Additionally, the job success score can drop if jobs are no longer considered in the calculation of the job success score because they fall outside the time frame. Judging from this criteria, a freelancer who works with only one client for more than 13 weeks in the last 16 weeks may see his or job success score dropping below 90%.

Searchable Freelancers: Are those freelancers which could be found via the methodology described beneath. It includes freelancers from all the job categories. It also captures freelancers from all the countries participating in Upwork platform.

Methodology

Our findings were arrived at by searching Upwork platform for the number of top rated plus, top rated and rising talent. To do so, we needed to have a client account. The maximum number of these freelancers we could search in the platform on the day of the study was 5,000. So, by setting the URL search page as 500, we were able to arrive at the number of these high quality freelancers. Below are the steps we followed;

Step 1: Log in to Upwork using a client account.

Step 2: Go to "browse freelancers."

Step 3: Click on "talent quality" at the top left hand side as shown in screenshot 1.

Screenshot 1

Step 4: Click on "top rated plus" and "freelancers" as shown in screenshot 2a and 2b.

Screenshot 2a

Screenshot 2b

Step 5: Click on "accounting and consulting" category as shown in screenshot 3

Screenshot 3

Step 6: Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on page 2 as shown in screenshot 4.

Screenshot 4

Step 7: Go to the URL link and change the page number to 500 from 2 as shown in screenshot 5.

Screenshot 5

Step 8: Click on the URL link and tap "ENTER"

Step 9: Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the last page reached. Multiply the page number by 10 as each page has 10 freelancer profiles. However, remember that the last page may have fewer profiles; hence you have to count the profiles mannually and subtract the deviation from the number arrived at when you intially assumed that each page has 10 profiles.

Step 10: Repeat step 5 to 8 above while changing the job category.

Step 11: Once you are done with the job categories for "top rated plus" , repeat the above steps for "top rated" and "rising talent".

Step 12: Sum up the total number of freelancers in each job category and talent quality type to arrive at the total number of searchable freelancers.

To find the number of top rated plus, top rated and rising talent in each country, just add the name of the country to the search filters above. For instance, in step 3, add U.S, India or Philippines as part of the filters as shown in screenshot 6.

Screenshot 6

Findings

Our findings were informed by a study we carried out on 15th May 2023 and 17th May 2023. The study involved finding the number of top rated plus, top rated and rising talent in each job category as well as in each country(United States, India and Philippines). Here is the summary of the findings.

• There are at least 102,267 high quality searchable freelancers in Upwork platform, enough to handle more than 50% of current open jobs. However, if we consider jobs posted by payment verified clients only, these freelancers are enough to handle more than 70% of the jobs. This assumes that each freelancer handles only one job.
• We believe that the number of high quality freelancers could exceed 102,267 given we reached the searchable limit of 5,000 jobs in admin support, design and creative, web, mobile and software development as well as writing jobs.
• U. S, India and Philippines contributed 50.46% of high quality freelancers in Upwork platform.
• Combined, Philippines and India contributed 34.17% of high quality freelancers.
• Philippines lead in terms of the number of high quality freelancers with 21.04%, followed by U.S(16.29%) and then India(13.13%).
• Web, mobile and software development lead in terms of the number of high quality freelancers with 14.67%, followed by design and creative(14.49%), admin support(14.09%) and sales and marketing(13.82%).

Top Rated Plus, Top Rated and Rising Talent

Job Category	Top Rated Plus	Top rated	Rising Talent	Total
Accounting & Consulting	1,767	2,612	1,981	6,360
Admin Support	4,414	5,000	5,000	14,414
Customer Service	2,104	2,595	1,872	6,571
Data Science & Analytics	1,251	2,082	1,208	4,541
Design & Creative	4,814	5,000	5,000	14,814
Engineering & Architecture	1,519	2,971	1,640	6,130
IT & Networking	863	1,073	668	2,604
Legal	174	267	136	577
Sales & Marketing	4,134	5,000	5,000	14,134
Translation	1,244	3,026	1,139	5,409
Web, Mobile & Software Dev	5,000	5,000	5,000	15,000
Writing	3,228	5,000	3,485	11,713
Total	30,512	39,626	32,129	102,267

Proportion of high quality freelancers

Job Category	Proportion(%)
Accounting & Consulting	6.22%
Admin Support	14.09%
Customer Service	6.43%
Data Science & Analytics	4.44%
Design & Creative	14.49%
Engineering & Architecture	5.99%
IT & Networking	2.55%
Legal	0.56%
Sales & Marketing	13.82%
Translation	5.29%
Web, Mobile & Software Dev	14.67%
Writing	11.45%

Breakdown of high quality freelancers per region

Job Category	Top Rated Plus				Top rated				Rising Talent
	U.S	India	Philippines	Other	U.S	India	Philippines	Other	U.S	India	Philippines	Other
Accounting & Consulting	456	136	522	653	505	236	650	1,221	328	122	470	1,061
Admin Support	433	223	2,178	1,580	497	426	3,326	751	328	203	1,732	2,737
Customer Service	112	53	1,323	616	99	75	1,480	941	66	39	1,045	722
Data Science & Analytics	224	193	119	715	187	294	162	1,439	143	120	68	877
Design & Creative	1,035	235	587	2,957	1,901	881	1,346	872	885	396	636	3,083
Engineering & Architecture	229	97	167	1,026	241	223	301	2,206	132	82	163	1,263
IT & Networking	170	173	48	472	99	205	45	724	98	106	36	428
Legal	70	23	23	58	79	38	23	127	30	26	15	65
Sales & Marketing	750	510	905	1,969	770	1,003	1,347	1,880	365	307	696	3,632
Translation	90	35	45	1,074	148	110	80	2,688	47	28	29	1,035
Web, Mobile & Software Dev	887	1,802	309	2,002	1,061	3,335	489	115	615	1,016	177	3,192
Writing	1,227	126	271	1,604	1,741	361	524	2,374	612	189	177	2,507
Total	5,683	3,606	6,497	14,726	7,328	7,187	9,773	15,338	3,649	2,634	5,244	20,602

Conclusion

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.” That means during layoffs at least one-third of Upwork's U.S freelancers stand a higher chance of being affected by the layoffs. 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. However, by examining the searchable limit in a three day period, we concluded that it lies between 5,000-1,000 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. There are also other factors that can make a freelancer profile not to appear in the search results. These include;

• The profile is set to private by its owner.
• Freelancer skills, experience, and platform ratings.
• 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..
• Market dynamics play a role in determining the number of searchable freelancers. In this case, we believe that job categories that have higher job posts will have a higher searchable limit.

It's probably a good move for Upwork to restrict the number of searchable high quality freelancers to around 100k as this ensures the platform's quality continue to grows i.e those freelancers who are starting out get a chance to be hired and build a reputation. However, this policy reduces the supply of high quality freelancers. Therefore, since at the moment, the supply of jobs exceed the supply of high quality freelancers, some clients may end up hiring freelancers with no reputation at all. If these freelancers screw up, clients might be discouraged to keep hiring in the platform.

It is important to note that without basing on Upwork badges, Upwork has a large number of educated freelancers. According to Upwork 2021 presentation 73% of Upwork freelancers had college degrees while 21% had post-graduate degrees.