The range of hourly rates charged by freelancers varies wildly, and from industry to industry but the average rate overall globally is $19 per hour.
According to an HRDive report, that's just one of the revelations in a new study from Payoneer, which looked at the earnings and demographics of freelancers from 170 countries. But another sad revelation is that even in the freelance world, women are coming out behind when it comes to pay rates.
The gap between men's and women's pay globally is huge—women earn just 54 percent of what men do, according to the World Economic Forum—but among freelancers women earn an average of 80 percent of what men do across all fields. That varies by industry, too; the biggest gap is in IT and programming, where women's average hourly rate is 76 percent of the average men's rate. The lowest gap is found in design and multimedia, where women earn 95 percent of what men do.
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Freelancers who provide legal services charge the most for their work, around $28 an hour, while the next highest wage earners are in IT ($21) and engineering and manufacturing ($21). Administrative and customer support workers are paid the lowest, averaging $11 per hour. Globally, more than half of freelancers (57 percent) charge under $15 an hour for their work, while 14 percent of respondents charge over $30.
More than 80 percent of respondents handle one to three jobs at a time, and nearly half of the respondents work a 30-to-50 hour week—perhaps not surprising, considering that actual jobs with benefits can run much higher when the cost of benefits is figured in. According to The Balance, for instance, an average secretary's salary breaks down to $18.63 per hour. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' September report, employer costs for employee compensation averaged $35.28 per hour worked in June 2017.
Most freelancers are under 40, the study finds, but older freelancers charge more for their services. And while on a global level, 6 percent of freelancers are over age 50, in the U.S., more than 33 percent of freelancers are at least 50 years old—probably speaking to the need for older people to supplement their income before retirement.
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