In 2025, businesses of every size are finding themselves needing to constantly adjust their hiring practices quickly based on current business needs. The “Great Resignation” wave of 2022 was replaced with widespread layoffs across industries in early 2023, followed by a slowdown in hiring for 2024. However, the war for talent continues and employers may still be challenged with finding the right people to fill roles within their organizations in the future.
According to Paul Estes,1 best-selling author of “The Gig Mindset” and former corporate executive in leadership positions at major international technology companies, nearly 60 million independent workers in the U.S. represent $1.5 trillion in U.S. GDP—and the number is growing. Projections estimate that 50% of the U.S. workforce will be independent workers by 2030.
With the unpredictable nature of business cycles and the immediate impact of the economy, enterprise organizations still stand to benefit from incorporating gig workers into hiring strategies to fill open requisitions, whether the need is long-term or short-term in 2025. Being able to effectively manage the costs of staff augmentation in line with the organization’s current needs is only one in a handful of benefits to tapping into the growing gig pool.
Another immediate benefit of relying on gig workers is that organizations are poised to scale their hiring needs up or down, depending on staffing needs. This may bode well for the banking, financial services, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and consumer product sectors, which are more quickly affected by movement in the financial markets.
Lastly, gig workers are already experienced in their industry and possess a unique skill set that would not require lengthy coaching for a project, which alleviates the employer from having to spend time with lengthy (and costly) training. According to an article in Forbes from January 16, 2025 “31 Companies Hiring Remote Freelancers in 2025”,2 almost 76% of executives and 78% of CEOs assert that their top freelancers contribute more value than degree-holding employees.
So, is your organization ready to take the plunge into the gig pool? Talent Shift® is founded on the idea of building a community of highly skilled professionals and bringing them together, creating an extensive network of connections that can highly benefit employers. Being able to tap into a deep pool of experienced professionals curated by the Talent Shift team is how we aim to drive value for our clients.
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