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Jobs 'aplenty' for freelance writers, devs & eCommerce specialists?
Thu, 17th Jan 2019
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Freelance writing, API development, blockchain, 2D animation, and social media management were the fastest-moving jobs in 2018 – while email development, journalism, and app design all took a tumble.

That's according to Freelancer.com's Fast 50 Report, which charts the movement of the top 50 fastest growing (and fastest shrinking) job categories on its marketplace. That marketplace hosts more than 31 million users and has facilitated more than 15 million jobs to date – and the company says it's the largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace in the world by number of users and jobs posted.

For the study, Freelancer.com analysed a selection of two million jobs listed in 2018 and found that content is truly the king.

Jobs tagged with the keyword ‘writing' took the top spot as the fastest moving job in 2018. The number of jobs shot up to 8537 in 2018 compared to 1343 in 2017 – a 535.67% jump. Academic Writing also saw substantial growth over the year, claiming a place in the top 10 fastest growing skills categories for 2018.

SEO content writing and blog writing also took their places in the top 20 fastest-growing areas, are more companies look towards the internet as a marketing platform. Blog writing jobs accounted for 4537 jobs in 2018 – a 146% year-on-year increase.

“If jobs involving the creation of digital content for online use were among the top growing areas during 2018, the it should come as no surprise that jobs involving the creation of the websites on which to put that content also dominated the top growing categories during the year,” the company says.

Web development accounted for 9632 jobs in 2018 – a 92.3% increase. Specialists in open source web framework Django were also in high demand, with more than 4500 completed jobs during the year.

Shopify Templates were another hot ticket: They grew by 110.7% year-on-year, with more than 6300 jobs in the category. This growth appears to demonstrate the growing interest in eCommerce websites and the accompanying growing demands in services surrounding their development, in this case Shopify.

React.js, the open source JavaScript library often used to develop user interfaces for mobile applications or single page applications (SPAs) on the web, meanwhile, grew by 81.4% during the year, claiming 7604 jobs over the 12-month period.

Tying into web development is API (Application Programming Interface), which was the second fastest growing job category in 2018. Jobs involving APIs -- the set of tools and protocols used for building application software and also an important tool for the development of websites -- grew by 352.4% in 2018. It accounted for more than 4600 jobs during the year.

Blockchain jobs surged in popularity, becoming the second fastest-growing category during the year, rising by 300.8% compared to the previous year. In 2018, there were more than 5400 jobs in the category, compared to just 1361 in 2017.

The 50 Fastest Moving Jobs in 2018

Rank

Job Category

2017

2018

Change (%)

1

Writing

1343

8537

535.67 %

2

API

1037

4691

352.36 %

3

Blockchain

1361

5455

300.81 %

4

Academic Writing

2828

8644

205.66 %

5

2D Animation

1400

3747

167.64 %

6

Social Media Management

1069

2752

157.44 %

7

Blog Writing

1840

4537

146.58 %

8

Express JS

1144

2616

128.67 %

9

Shopify Templates

3015

6352

110.68 %

10

Drawing

1349

2711

100.96 %

11

Excel VBA

1202

2353

95.76 %

12

Web Development

5009

9632

92.29 %

13

Hindi

1522

2889

89.82 %

14

SEO Writing

1402

2590

84.74 %

15

Illustrator

59188

109056

84.25 %

16

After Effects

14395

26349

83.04 %

17

React.js

4191

7604

81.44 %

18

DNS

1201

2127

77.10 %

19

PhoneGap

2736

4753

73.72 %

20

English (US)

25179

43520

72.84 %

21

Machine learning

4340

7452

71.71 %

22

Adobe Illustrator

6202

10590

70.75 %

23

Django

2710

4560

68.27 %

24

Search Engine Marketing

5672

9413

65.96 %

25

Adobe InDesign

6515

10752

65.03 %

26

Press Releases

2449

1145

-53.25 %

27

Cocoa

1239

574

-53.67 %

28

Nutrition

1030

468

-54.56 %

29

Psychology

1935

859

-55.61 %

30

Plugin

3330

1449

-56.49 %

31

Materials Engineering

1546

654

-57.70 %

32

Pattern Making

1256

526

-58.12 %

33

Label Design

2925

1195

-59.15 %

34

Weddings

1195

488

-59.16 %

35

Motion Graphics

4924

1991

-59.57 %

36

Manufacturing

4486

1808

-59.70 %

37

Industrial Design

3141

1256

-60.01 %

38

Logistics

1442

562

-61.03 %

39

Order Processing

2263

832

-63.23 %

40

Shopping Carts

16899

5845

-65.41 %

41

App Developer

17898

6070

-66.09 %

42

Payroll

3498

1134

-67.58 %

43

Pickup

2228

681

-69.43 %

44

CATIA

1010

306

-69.70 %

45

App Designer

8634

2531

-70.69 %

46

Software Development

31449

9212

-70.71 %

47

Journalist

1580

427

-72.97 %

48

Squarespace

1781

440

-75.29 %

49

Email Developer

4262

840

-80.29 %

50

LESS/Sass/SCSS

2697

514

-80.94 %