Upwork Platform Insights

Investments
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This topic is centered around Upwork Platform Insights.

Insights are derived directly from the Upwork Platform and are not available elsewhere.
Most relevant data points will be updated regularly.

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Here is our recent findings on Upwork;

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Well summarized. Two follow-up questions:

  • Why are IT and networking jobs growing so quickly? As an example does a large portion of the 1,500 AI Jobs fall into this category or was the category simply restructured?
    (Number reference the community: Total Upwork open jobs stand currently at 194,235, so both the ai job section and the IT and networking jobs category are relatively small and insignificant as of now.)
  • Can you look up how client spend developed in the cohorts in the last years and display the development in a table in the Wiki? Just from the visual impression it looks like that the 2020 cohort suffered a contraction in 2022 while the 2021 cohort increased spending.
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  1. I don’t think it has anything to do with AI.

  • Looking at today’s job posts, jobs mentioning AI in IT and networking category are only 120 out of 5,156.

  • I think the category likely to be heavily impacted by AI is data science and analytics. Out of 7,026 job posts in data science and analytics category today, 2,329 mentioned AI

  • Web, mobile and software development category had 2,152 AI jobs out of 49,386.

  • Even Hayden Brown gave data science and analytics as an example of category impacted by AI during Q1 2023 earnings call. She said data science and analytics category job postings grew 33%, year-over-year and 22% sequentially.

  1. Probably because there was acceleration in client spend in 2020 due to Covid pandemic i.e clients in 2020 cohort were mostly as a result of Covid while clients in 2021 were less contributed by Covid: Upwork - InvestmentWiki
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@Aron I renamed this topic so that it could be fully focused on insights we are deriving from the Upwork Platform. I imagine updates about those insights being posted here regularly (maybe once a month) and especially as soon as there are any important changes or new insights that have not been there before.

Before earnings, it will also be very important to get the latest numbers and insights so we could take them into account in our pre-earnings assessment and act on them if necessary.

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  • The average number of open jobs posted in Upwork platform were flat m/m at 191,217 in August.
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  • The average number of jobs by new clients fell by 2% m/m to 78,342(July: -4%).
  • The average number of hourly open jobs by clients who have spend over $1 million in Upwork fell by 9% m/m to 868 in August.

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  • The average number of open jobs fell by 3% month-over-month to 184,587 in September, but was up by 13% year-over-year.
  • Average number of hourly job posts by clients who have spent over $1 million in the platform rose by 1% m/m to 883.
  • The average number of jobs posted by new clients dropped by 12% m/m to 68,970 in September, but was up by 19% y/y.
  • Web, mobile and software development jobs declined by 4% m/m to 46,012 while Design and Creative jobs fell by 2% m/m to 39,642.
  • The average number of contract-to-hire roles fell by 4% m/m to 57,748 on the month (August: -3%)
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I=8

  • The average number of open jobs in Upwork declined 7% m/m to 170,863 in October, but was up 1% y/y.
  • The average number of less than 30 hours jobs fell by 8% m/m to 79,617 while average number of more than 30 hours jobs declined 25% m/m to 23,691.

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  • Web, mobile and software development jobs declined by 3% m/m to 43,865 while Design and Creative jobs fell by 8% m/m to 35,797.

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  • The average number of open jobs by clients who have spent over $1 million rose 7% m/m to 948.
  • The average number of jobs posted by new clients declined by 14% m/m to 59,145, but was flat y/y.
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  • The average number of open jobs in Upwork fell by 1% m/m and 4.8% y/y to 169,064 in November.
  • Month-over-month decline in the average number of jobs was mostly broad-based.
  • The average number of open jobs by new clients (those that don’t have any hires) grew by 3.5% m/m to 61,259 but was down 5% y/y.

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  • The average number of open jobs in Upwork declined by 4.8% m/m and 11.9% y/y to 160,970.
  • Decline in the average number of open jobs was led by web, mobile and software development, which fell by 2,232 or 5% m/m.
  • The average number of open jobs by new clients (those that don’t have any hires) fell by 4.5% m/m and 15.6% y/y to 58,535.

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  • The average number of jobs listed in Upwork fell by 3.6% m/m and 18.8% y/y to 155,154 in January.
  • The average number of jobs listed by new clients declined by 2.7% m/m and 27.1% y/y to 56,976.
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  • The decline in the average number of open jobs was mostly broadbased across job categories.
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@Aron could you update our numbers on Upwork once and briefly summarize your findings in the Forum like you did it before?
I am getting more interested in Upwork again now that it the stock is nearing $10 and would be curious to know how the numbers we have been tracking developed in the meantime.

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No much changes in my opinion. What stood out to me is that the proportion of jobs from existing clients is at an all-time high of 68% while that of jobs from clients with no hires is at an all-time low of 32%. That means Upwork is probably relying more on existing clients at the moment. Also, Upwork stopped publishing breakdown of jobs according to the number of connects.

Otherwise, the number of open jobs is still declining.

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