Online staffing firm Elance-oDesk announced today its official launch in Australia, opening offices in Melbourne and Sydney. Elance and oDesk merged in December 2013 and have a combined global community of more than 8 million freelancers. 

Kjetil Olsen, Vice President International for Elance-oDesk, commented: “We are thrilled to officially launch Elance-oDesk in Australia. Due to connectivity and technology, work in Australia is being reinvented and shifting online, bringing job opportunities to professionals while also helping businesses progress by tapping into talent in the cloud.”

The Australian arm of the business will be headed by Country Manager Kyri Theos. Two City Managers are already in place in Melbourne and Sydney, with plans to hire City Managers in Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane in the near future.

According to Elance-oDesk, Australians are leaders in online work adoption. In the past three years, online hiring has increased by +235%. Australia is the top hiring country on Elance-oDesk and spends twice as much as the United States per capita on online recruitment. 

In expanding to Australia, Elance-oDesk will be competing directly against strong local vendor, Freelancer.com, which went public at the end of 2013.

There are currently 161,000 businesses registered on Elance-oDesk, the equivalent of approximately 8% of all businesses in the country. In the past 12 months, 40% of jobs posted by Australian businesses were IT & Programming, with 26% Design and Multimedia projects.

Future hiring expectations point toward increasing demand for content creation and online marketing. Of those surveyed by Elance-oDesk, 91% said that in the next 12 months they plan to hire the same of more freelancers than they did in 2013.

Staffing Industry Analysts’ forecasts very strong growth for the global online staffing sector up to 2020 (member protected content).