When Amit Sharma (name changed) graduated from college a couple of years ago, he landed a job through campus placement. Few months into the role, however, Sharma began to feel that his growth was stagnating.

He left his full-time job to explore freelancing via project-based assignments. Besides being able to take up assignments on his own will, there were added benefits such as not getting restricted to routine tasks and upskilling as per market requirements.

But when Covid-19 hit earlier this year, he became worried over how it would impact his work and income as companies would cut costs to tackle the disruption. To his surprise, this concern turned out to be an opportunity. “There is a change visible in attitude as remote working is considered normal now,” he says.

How is this shift manifesting in terms of optimism levels among freelancers?

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index – based on a survey of 2,254 professionals in India during July 27-August 23 – provides some answers to this question. The index gauges sentiments around one’s ability to get or hold on to a job right now, improve their financial situation in the next six months and progress in their career over the next year.

Freelancers reported cautious optimism with an overall individual confidence index score of +46, on a scale from -100 to +100 – remaining largely steady over the last month. Compared to this, full-time workers were seen to be more upbeat, even registering an uptick in confidence levels during August.

One in four freelancers anticipated an increase in their earned income in the next six months – reflecting similar sentiments as other segments of the workforce such as full-time employees and self-employed workers. Close to a third of them also said they expect an increase in their personal savings and investments during this period.

Even as businesses restart and restrictions begin to ease, will hiring for freelancers and temporary workers pick up?

A Deloitte report from April on the future of work said that a few organisations are beginning to evaluate the benefits of an alternative workforce model.

A leading automotive company is exploring the option of earmarking roles…using gig workers on a sustained basis, the report said. Besides, one of the largest media houses has decided to leverage freelancers/ gig workforce for content roles, for greater crowdsourcing of content, it said.

The pandemic has accelerated the temporary worker economy, Suraj Moraje, Group CEO of staffing firm Quess Corp Limited says. And this trend is likely to sustain in the short term for two reasons:

One, several employers are hesitant to take on the responsibility for new permanent employees as the demand outlook remains murky. And two, companies want to bring in specialised skill sets for a variety of roles. For instance, Quess is seeing strong demand for several IT skills such as RPA and SAP, with steep increases in going rates. At the same time, as companies gear up for the forthcoming festival season, demand is picking up for some frontline roles – likely to raise compensation levels.

With remote work and temporary hiring finding more takers, this could also help boost the participation of women in the labour market, experts say. The Workforce Confidence Index finds that more female professionals reported increased anxiety and stress levels due to the pandemic, even as their optimism levels remained low on the personal finances front. As per data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, four out of every ten women who were working during the last year lost their jobs during the lockdown.

That relative confidence level remains low for freelancers could be because the uptick in demand has not been consistent across sectors.

Some organisations are focusing on safeguarding the interests of their on-roll employees, with the fate of the alternative workforce depending “largely on the goodwill of the employers”, the Deloitte report said. India recorded a GDP contraction of 24% in the April-June quarter. Clearly companies would stay more mindful of how they spend.

Many freelancers are now keen on learning about personal branding, HR expert Abhijit Bhaduri says. “They realise they can no longer fall back on the business card of the employer. This is when they need to truly discover what they stand for,” he says.

Workforce Confidence Index Methodology

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index is based on a quantitative online survey that is distributed to members via email every two weeks. Roughly 1,000+ India-based members respond each wave. Members are randomly sampled and must be opted into research to participate. Students, stay-at-home partners & retirees are excluded from analysis so we’re able to get an accurate representation of those currently active in the workforce. We analyse data in aggregate and will always respect member privacy. 

Data is weighted by engagement level, to ensure fair representation of various activity levels on the platform. The results represent the world as seen through the lens of LinkedIn’s membership; variances between LinkedIn’s membership & overall market population are not accounted for. Confidence index scores are calculated by assigning each respondent a score (-100, -50, 0, 50, 100) based on how much they agree or disagree with each of three statements, and then finding the composite average score across all statements. Scores are averaged across two waves of data collection to ensure an accurate trend reading. The three statements are: [Job Security] I feel confident about my ability to get or hold onto a job right now; [Finances] I feel confident about my ability to improve my financial situation in the next 6 months; [Career] I feel confident about my ability to progress in my career in the next year.

Neil Basu and Artem Chelovechkov from LinkedIn Market Research contributed to this article.