Do you feel optimistic about the future of freelancing looking into 2025 and beyond?
We asked our respondents about their optimism for the years ahead, in the context of the last 12 months being one of the hardest years for many freelancers.
Our group was split across how they felt about 2024 - 53.5% said it was a bad year, with 14.5% experiencing their worst year in self-employment, and only 21% have a significantly positive year.
Sentiment from across our communities was poor for 2024 too - with many reporting long periods out of work, with people struggling to find work across the spectrum of experience and industries.
More than half of our group considered leaving self-employment during 2025.
This number might actually be higher across the total population, as we only polled individuals who are currently self-employed.
68% of our group still feel that self-employment is a sustainable way of working for them, however over a third no longer feel that freelancing is sustainable - which is a significant proportion.
Of the group who did not choose to work in self-employment, xxxxx
Our group do not feel overly optimistic about 2025 - only 27.4% feel actively positive about 2025, and around a quarter feel actively negative about freelancing in 2025.
50% are really hedging their bets, and feel neither overly positive nor negative - demonstrating how hard it can be to predict what freelancing might be like, year to year.
