62% of Freelancers Struggle with Inconsistent Work

Freelancing gives people more control over where they work, which clients they work with and how they structure their careers. It also changes who carries the responsibility for keeping work coming in.

For a salaried employee, work normally continues until something changes in the employment relationship. For a freelancer, finishing the work can also mean finishing the income attached to it. A website launches, a campaign ends, a consulting engagement reaches its final milestone or a client simply decides not to commission another project.

That makes inconsistent work one of the more important risks in freelancing. It affects income, but the effects go further than that. An uncertain pipeline can influence pricing, negotiating power, the willingness to reject poor projects and the amount of unpaid time spent looking for the next client.

An earlier version of this report centred on the claim that 62% of freelancers struggle with inconsistent work. We have removed that figure. We could not find sufficiently strong evidence to support it as a global statistic, and current international research shows that the freelance workforce itself is still difficult to measure consistently.

This report looks at what the available evidence does tell us.

Executive Summary

The evidence points to a fairly consistent underlying problem even though there is no reliable global percentage for it.

Freelancers frequently work through finite projects, which means completed work has to be replaced. Digital platforms have made that replacement easier by opening access to clients across countries and regions, but access to a large marketplace does not guarantee a steady flow of suitable projects.

Dependence also matters. The OECD’s research into self-employed online freelancers in the platform economy identified concerns around contractual certainty, negotiating power and dependence on platform-client relationships. The research was qualitative and focused on several European countries, so it should not be treated as a global prevalence study, but the problems it describes are useful for understanding how platform dependence can affect independent workers.

Client concentration creates a similar risk outside marketplaces. A freelancer can appear to have stable income while most of that income comes from one organisation. If the client’s budget or priorities change, what looked like a stable business can change quickly.

At the same time, flexibility remains an important part of why people choose freelance work. Upwork’s US-based Freelance Forward 2023 research found flexibility and control among the main motivations for freelancing. The useful distinction is that control over when someone works does not necessarily provide certainty about how much work will be available in three or six months.

The overall picture is therefore more nuanced than “freelancing is unstable.” Independent work can expand opportunity and autonomy while transferring more responsibility for maintaining continuity of work to the individual.

Key Findings

Measuring the Market

Any serious discussion of inconsistent freelance work has to begin with the measurement problem.

Freelancing, platform work, gig work, contract work and self-employment overlap, but they are not interchangeable categories. Someone completing occasional design work alongside a salaried job is in a very different position from someone earning their entire income through independent client projects.

The ILO’s 2026 research brief on digital labour platforms and the number of workers says current data sources remain insufficient to accurately estimate the total number of people engaged in digital platform employment. The organisation specifically calls for stronger internationally agreed statistical standards so countries can produce more comparable data.

The World Bank reached a similarly wide range when estimating online gig work. Its Working Without Borders research estimated between 154 million and 435 million people engaged in online gig work globally, depending on the methodology and whether secondary and marginal participation were included. That represented roughly 4.4% to 12.5% of the global labour force under the report’s definitions.

A range that wide is not a weakness in the research. It shows how much the answer depends on what counts as online gig work.

The same caution should apply to claims about freelancer challenges. Without a clearly defined population, geography, survey question and methodology, a precise worldwide percentage can easily suggest more certainty than the data supports.

Why Work Becomes Uneven

Much of the instability begins with the nature of project work itself.

A freelancer may be hired to redesign a website, build an application, write a report, produce a campaign or solve a specific business problem. Once the agreed work is delivered, the project may simply be over. Some relationships continue into maintenance, retainers or new assignments, but continuation is not automatic.

This means independent workers are usually managing current delivery and future demand at the same time. While completing client work, they may also need to maintain marketplace profiles, respond to opportunities, speak with prospective clients, ask for referrals, update portfolios or stay in contact with people they have worked with before.

The problem often becomes visible after a particularly busy period. Someone can spend several months fully occupied with client delivery and stop doing almost everything connected with future business. When several projects finish together, there is suddenly very little behind them.

The freelancer was busy. The pipeline was not.

Flexibility and Security

The uncertainty around future work needs to be considered alongside one of freelancing’s main attractions: flexibility.

Upwork’s Freelance Forward 2023 study surveyed 3,000 US working adults, including 1,142 freelancers. The research found flexibility in scheduling, control over financial future and the ability to choose where to work among the main reasons people freelanced.

It also reported that 77% of freelancers surveyed said they worked consistently according to a schedule that suited their lifestyle.

This was US research commissioned by Upwork, so it should not be treated as evidence for freelancers everywhere. It does help separate two ideas that are often mixed together.

A freelancer can have considerable control over their working week while having limited certainty over their next quarter.

Someone may know exactly when they plan to work Monday to Friday and still not know whether a major client will renew in three months. Flexibility in how work is organised and predictability of future demand are different parts of the freelance experience.

Platforms Expand Access

Digital platforms have changed where freelancers can look for work.

Before online marketplaces became common, an independent professional was much more dependent on local networks, agencies, referrals or businesses within a reachable geographic market. A freelancer can now work with clients across cities, countries and time zones without either side needing to meet physically.

The World Bank’s research into online gig work found that demand for this work was growing particularly quickly in developing countries. Its wider Working Without Borders research also identified regional and local platforms alongside the large global marketplaces, showing that the market is much broader than a handful of internationally recognised websites.

This has real value. A designer in one country can work with a startup in another. Developers, marketers, writers, analysts and consultants can sell skills into markets that would previously have been difficult to reach.

What platforms cannot provide is guaranteed continuity. The volume of suitable projects changes, competition changes and client budgets change. A large addressable market gives freelancers more potential opportunities, but it does not mean the right opportunity will appear every week.

Platform Dependence Adds Risk

Using a marketplace and depending on a marketplace are different situations.

The OECD’s study of self-employed online freelancers in the platform economy examined the experiences of freelancers operating through digital labour platforms in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland.

The study found concerns around limited transparency and certainty in platform contracts, negotiating power with clients and the ability to develop relationships outside individual platforms. Freelancers also described rating systems that could create uneven power relationships.

The research was based on interviews rather than a global survey, so it tells us about mechanisms and experiences rather than how common they are among all freelancers.

Those mechanisms still matter.

If most future income depends on one marketplace, then changes within that marketplace become business risks. A reduction in relevant demand, weaker profile visibility, increased competition or another change in how work is distributed can affect the freelancer even when the quality of their own work has not changed.

A strong marketplace can be an excellent source of clients. A business built entirely around one source is simply more exposed to that source.

Ratings Affect Negotiation

Ratings and reviews help solve a real problem in online freelance markets.

A client may be hiring someone thousands of kilometres away whom they have never met. Previous client feedback can provide useful evidence that the freelancer communicates well, completes projects and delivers work that clients value.

The same reputation system can influence how freelancers behave when a project becomes difficult.

The OECD’s research into online freelancers describes asymmetries in negotiating power between freelancers, clients and platforms. When reputation affects future access to work, a disagreement with one client can feel more important than the value of the current project alone.

A freelancer may be more willing to accept another revision, tolerate scope drift or avoid challenging unreasonable expectations when they believe a negative rating could affect future income.

This does not mean reputation systems are inherently bad. It shows why alternatives matter. A freelancer with several healthy routes to work can negotiate differently from someone whose next project depends almost entirely on one platform profile.

Client Concentration Matters

The same kind of dependence can develop without a platform.

A freelancer may work with one client for months or years and receive regular, predictable income. This can be an excellent relationship for both sides. It reduces sales activity, gives the freelancer deep knowledge of the client’s business and can make planning much easier.

It can also hide concentration risk.

If one client represents most of the freelancer’s revenue, a decision inside that organisation can change the freelancer’s financial position quickly. The company may freeze hiring, change strategy, lose funding, appoint a new manager or decide to bring the work in-house.

None of those events necessarily reflects the quality of the freelancer’s work.

This is why client count alone is not a particularly useful measure of stability. What matters more is how income is distributed between those clients and how difficult the largest relationship would be to replace.

A freelancer with four clients can still be highly concentrated if one of them accounts for most of the revenue.

Pipelines Affect Pricing

Inconsistent work also changes the way commercial decisions are made.

A freelancer who already has several months of work confirmed can reject a project with an unrealistic deadline, weak budget or poorly defined scope. Someone with nothing booked after the current week may find the same offer much harder to refuse.

This is where work inconsistency starts affecting negotiating power rather than income alone.

The OECD’s findings on working conditions and negotiating power among platform freelancers are relevant here. When individuals depend heavily on a particular client or route to work, their ability to negotiate commercial terms can become weaker.

The practical effect is familiar to many independent workers. A weak pipeline can lead to lower prices, looser scope boundaries or projects that would have been rejected under better circumstances.

Future work therefore affects today’s decisions.

Unpaid Time Changes Economics

Freelance work includes a meaningful amount of activity that never appears on a client invoice.

Finding opportunities takes time. So do proposals, introductory calls, estimates, follow-ups, invoicing, portfolio maintenance and administration. Some freelancers also spend time creating content, attending industry events or maintaining professional relationships because those activities eventually generate clients.

These are normal costs of operating independently.

They become more important when paid work is inconsistent because the ratio between billable and non-billable time can change sharply from one month to another.

This is one reason comparing a freelancer’s hourly rate directly with an employee’s hourly wage can be misleading. A freelance rate may need to support not only the time spent completing the project but also the time between projects and the business activity required to find them.

A freelancer can therefore be extremely busy without every hour producing current revenue.

Risk Is Not Equal

Not everyone who freelances depends on it in the same way.

For some people, independent work is their main livelihood. For others it sits alongside a salaried job, education, caregiving or another business.

The World Bank’s global estimates illustrate why this distinction matters. The upper end of its estimate for online gig workers includes people participating as secondary or marginal workers, not only people relying on platform work as their main occupation. Its Working Without Borders report makes that difference explicit.

A quiet month has very different consequences in those two situations.

Someone using freelancing as secondary income may simply earn less additional money. Someone paying their rent and household expenses entirely from independent work faces a much larger financial effect.

This is another reason broad claims about “freelancers” need context. Two people performing the same work on the same platform can have very different levels of exposure.

Protection Remains Uneven

Income volatility becomes more significant when workers have fewer protections around that income.

The exact system varies by country, but traditional employment can include employer-supported pensions, unemployment protection, paid leave, health benefits or sick leave. Independent workers may need to arrange or finance more of these protections themselves.

The World Bank’s work on social protection for online gig workers examines the difficulty of extending social insurance and other protections to workers operating through online gig markets, particularly in developing countries.

The issue has also moved onto the international labour-policy agenda. In June 2026, the International Labour Conference adopted the Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention, 2026 (No. 193), the first international labour standard dedicated specifically to the platform economy.

The Convention recognises both sides of the market. Digital labour platforms can create opportunities for business development, formalisation, work and income, while the platform economy can also contain decent-work deficits that require attention.

This does not mean freelancing or platform work is inherently insecure. It means income variability needs to be considered alongside the protections available when that income drops.

Repeat Work Improves Stability

One of the biggest changes in an established freelance business is that every project no longer has to start with a completely new relationship.

Winning a new client takes effort. The freelancer needs to be discovered, establish credibility, understand the problem, agree on scope and create enough trust for the project to begin.

Much of that friction disappears with a client who already knows the freelancer’s work.

Repeat clients understand how the person communicates and delivers. The freelancer already has context around the organisation, people and previous work. New projects can begin much faster.

Over time, repeat clients and referrals can reduce the amount of revenue that has to be recreated through cold acquisition.

The freelancer still needs a pipeline, but the pipeline becomes less dependent on persuading strangers every month.

Retainers Can Help

Recurring client needs can also create greater visibility over future revenue.

Marketing, software maintenance, design support, bookkeeping, consulting and content are all examples of work that can continue over several months when the underlying need is genuinely ongoing.

A well-structured retainer gives the client reliable access to a freelancer while giving the freelancer some idea of the revenue already committed for the next month.

The structure matters. A vague monthly arrangement can easily become unlimited availability for a fixed fee. Good retainers normally have enough clarity around scope, capacity and expectations that both sides know what is included.

Not every service should be pushed into this model either. Some freelance work has a natural endpoint, and trying to manufacture recurring work where none exists usually creates a poor commercial relationship.

Retainers help with consistency when the work itself is recurring, not simply because recurring revenue sounds attractive.

Diversification Reduces Exposure

A freelancer does not need ten different acquisition channels to reduce risk.

They do benefit from having more than one realistic way for work to arrive.

One person may combine a marketplace with repeat clients and referrals. Another may get direct enquiries through LinkedIn while also working with agencies. Someone else may use a specialist freelance network alongside several established clients.

The right mix depends on the type of work and where clients normally look for it.

What matters is avoiding a situation where one change removes almost every future opportunity at the same time.

This is also part of the thinking behind the way Flexable has evolved. Instead of relying purely on clients browsing large directories of freelancers, the current model starts with the project and works toward relevant matching. We explain that shift in FLXB 2.0: How Flexable Works Today.

No marketplace, including Flexable, can promise permanent demand. A useful platform can reduce the effort required for relevant clients and freelancers to find each other. That is different from guaranteeing continuous work.

Technology Changes Demand

The type of freelance work available also changes over time.

Technology can reduce demand for certain tasks, increase demand for others and change how much clients are willing to pay for work that previously required more manual effort.

Generative AI is a clear current example.

Upwork’s US-based 2023 freelancer research found that 20% of freelancers surveyed used generative AI multiple times per week, compared with 9% of non-freelance professionals. Reported uses included research, brainstorming, translation, proposal writing and coding.

Those numbers do not tell us whether AI will increase or reduce freelance employment overall.

They do show that independent professionals were adopting these tools quickly.

For freelancers, the longer-term effect is likely to differ by service. Work whose value came mainly from producing a basic output may face more pressure as production becomes easier. Work involving specialist judgment, client context, integration, decision-making and responsibility is harder to reduce to the output of one tool.

We look at that wider change in our report on the global rise of freelancing.

What Improves Stability

There is no single fix for inconsistent freelance work.

The evidence instead points toward several forms of risk that can be reduced.

Client concentration can be monitored. Platform dependence can be balanced with other routes to work. Pipeline activity can continue at a manageable level even when current projects are busy. Repeat clients can reduce acquisition pressure, and recurring engagements can provide greater visibility where the client’s needs genuinely continue.

Financial planning matters as well. Freelance revenue rarely arrives in perfectly even monthly blocks, so a financial buffer gives independent workers more room to make sensible decisions when demand slows instead of accepting the first available project under pressure.

None of these measures makes freelancing as predictable as a fixed salary.

They make the business less fragile when something changes.

Clients Shape Stability

The freelancer is not the only person responsible for uncertainty.

Client behaviour plays a meaningful role too.

Projects can be delayed after freelancers have reserved capacity. Budgets can disappear after discussions have progressed. Scope can expand after a fixed fee has been agreed. Payments can arrive later than the terms originally promised.

Some level of uncertainty is unavoidable in business. Much of this is not.

Clearer briefs, realistic schedules, sensible payment terms and early communication when priorities change can make freelance relationships more workable without removing the flexibility that clients value.

Companies increasingly use independent specialists because they do not want every capability permanently inside the organisation. That model works better when flexibility does not simply mean transferring every piece of uncertainty to the freelancer.

Platforms Shape the Market

Platforms also influence how much unnecessary friction exists between demand and talent.

More listings alone do not necessarily produce a healthier freelance market. If briefs are unclear or matching is poor, freelancers can spend large amounts of unpaid time pursuing work they were never likely to win.

Better project information allows people to decide whether an opportunity is relevant before investing that time. Clear commercial terms make pricing easier. Reliable payment processes reduce uncertainty after the work is completed.

Matching matters for the client as well. A company should not need to work through hundreds of irrelevant profiles to find someone suitable for a well-defined project.

The adoption of ILO Convention No. 193 also means the relationship between platform design, worker rights and working conditions is likely to receive greater attention internationally.

Platforms cannot remove the natural variability of client demand.

They can reduce the variability created by badly designed systems.

Implications for Freelancers

The main lesson for freelancers is that being busy and being stable are not the same thing.

Current workload tells you what is happening now. Business stability also depends on what happens after that work finishes.

Useful indicators include how much future work is already confirmed, how dependent revenue is on the largest client, how much business comes from repeat relationships and how many realistic ways a new client can find you.

The answer does not need to be complicated. A freelancer with a handful of good repeat clients, one reliable acquisition channel and enough financial room to handle a quiet month may be in a much stronger position than someone managing many small projects with no visibility beyond the current week.

Stability tends to develop around the service itself: stronger relationships, clearer positioning, better commercial judgment and a healthier pipeline.

Implications for Platforms

For platforms, the challenge is slightly different.

A marketplace cannot guarantee that demand will always match the number or skills of freelancers available. Promising that would ignore how project markets work.

What platforms can improve is the process around that demand.

Better matching can reduce the number of irrelevant applications. Better project information can reduce time wasted investigating unsuitable work. Clear fees and payments can make commercial decisions easier. Stronger trust systems can help clients hire without creating unnecessary power imbalances for workers.

The ILO’s 2026 Convention on decent work in the platform economy is a useful marker of where the wider conversation is heading. Platform work has grown large enough that the quality of the systems around it is becoming an international labour issue, not simply a product-design question.

Report Conclusion

The evidence does not support the claim that exactly 62% of freelancers globally struggle with inconsistent work. Current international data is not sufficiently standardised to support that level of precision across such a broad and varied workforce.

The underlying problem is still clear.

Independent work frequently operates through finite projects, changing client demand and relationships that do not guarantee continuation. Digital platforms have significantly expanded access to clients, but they do not remove that underlying variability. Dependence on one platform or one major client can increase exposure further, particularly when the freelancer has few alternatives available.

The effect is also not the same for everyone. A professional using freelancing as supplementary income is in a different position from someone relying on it for their entire livelihood. An established consultant with repeat clients has a different risk profile from someone trying to win their first projects through one marketplace.

That is why inconsistent work is better understood as a risk to manage than a single statistic that applies equally to every freelancer.

For freelancers, greater stability tends to come from repeat relationships, healthier pipelines, lower concentration and more than one realistic route to work. For clients, it comes from clearer commitments and better communication. For platforms, it means improving matching, transparency and payment systems so independent workers do not carry uncertainty that can reasonably be removed.

Freelancing will probably always contain more movement than a fixed salary. That is part of what gives the model its flexibility.

The more useful goal is to make sure that flexibility does not require unnecessary fragility.