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oDesk Hourly Billings Jump

January 29, 2013

oDesk, a privately-held, online staffing platform based in Redwood City, Calif., reported the number of contractor hours billed rose by about 60 percent in 2012 to 35 million hours billed, up from 22 million hours billed in 2011, the company said in an interview with Staffing Industry Analysts’ research analyst Andrew Karpie. In 2009, the company posted 5 million hours billed.  

Information technology tasks, such as software development and website development generated the most revenue, the company said. Meanwhile, seven of the top 10 fastest-growing specialized skill categories in terms of spend (based on two-year compound annual growth rate), were predominantly non-technical:

  1. Engineering & technical design (Tech)
  2. Project management
  3. Translation
  4. Copywriting
  5. Game development (Tech)
  6. Mobile apps (Tech)
  7. Advertising
  8. Illustration
  9. Bookkeeping
  10. Video production

The United States was the top country in terms of dollars spent for oDesk contractor services. Rounding out the top five are Australia, Canada, U.K. and the United Arab Emirates.

In terms of dollars earned by oDesk contractors, India ranked as No. 1 in 2012, followed by the Philippines, U.S., Ukraine and Pakistan.   

Use of oDesk by companies outside the U.S. has been also been growing over the last several years, according to the company. Compound annual growth since 2011 shows that the countries with the highest growth in client spend were (in rank order): Ukraine, Russia, India, Malaysia and China.