Remote Business Services (Accounting, Consulting, Project Management)
Not to overlook the “non-creative” side: Many traditional business roles are becoming freelance/contract based:
Accounting & Bookkeeping: Small businesses often outsource bookkeeping, tax prep, financial analysis. Upwork’s report shows Accounting, Bookkeeping, Tax Prep as top in-demand skills in the Accounting & Consulting category. A freelance accountant (with CPA or similar) can handle multiple clients’ books remotely using QuickBooks, etc.
HR and Recruiting: Also in Upwork’s list: Recruiting & Talent Sourcing (#3) and HR Administration (#6). Companies are hiring freelance recruiters to find talent (especially in tech), or HR consultants to manage policies and compliance for a few hours a week. If you have corporate HR experience, this is a growing gig area.
Project Management: Managing projects remotely – could be IT projects, construction (they even listed Construction Project Management in a category). Virtual project managers who coordinate teams, manage timelines, ensure deliverables, are needed especially for distributed teams. Familiarity with tools like Asana, Jira, etc., plus great communication skills, make this possible as a freelance role.
Career Coaching / Training: Interestingly, Upwork noted a 74% increase in demand for career coaching and development roles year-over-year. This suggests companies and individuals are hiring freelancers to provide coaching, training, and professional development. If you have management or coaching experience, packaging it into a freelance service (e.g., “I offer leadership training workshops via Zoom” or one-on-one career coaching sessions) can tap into this need.
Legal Consulting: Some small businesses seek freelance legal consultants for contracts, IP, etc., though this often requires a law license.
Why these are hot: Businesses are leaning into flexible talent for roles that historically were in-house. The pandemic taught companies that remote work works, and now even critical business functions can be outsourced to experts on-demand. Also, a statistic: 49% of businesses are turning to freelancers to address skill gaps – this isn’t just technical gaps, but across functions.
Example: A startup might not afford a full-time CFO, but they hire a freelance accountant to close books monthly and a financial consultant to create forecasts each quarter. Or a growing company might hire a freelance HR consultant to set up their hiring processes and be on-call for HR issues a few hours a week instead of a full HR staff.
Skill level & pay: Many of these require credentials/experience (e.g., CPA for accounting, SHRM for HR maybe). Pay can be very good since you’re a specialist: freelance bookkeepers might charge $30-$60/hr, CPAs much more (some do packages like $500/mo for XYZ tasks). Recruiters sometimes get paid per hire or a % of salary as a commission. Project managers might charge $50/hr, or flat fees per project stage. And coaches often charge per session (varying widely; career coaches might charge anywhere from $50 to $200 per hour session depending on niche and clientele). The key is companies realize they can get high expertise for a fraction of a full-time cost, so they’re willing to pay well for freelancers who bring that expertise and can integrate smoothly.