Upwork’s 100 skills with fastest growth — ‘.NET Core’ tops list

The fastest-growing skill in the third quarter on Upwork Inc. (NASDAQ: UPWK) was “.NET Core,” an open-source development platform maintained by Microsoft. That’s according to a report released by online staffing firm Upwork that lists the 100 skills with the fastest growth. The second fastest-growing skill was TypeScript, an open source programming language developed by Microsoft.

Many of the skills were related to technology, but not all; romance writing ranked No. 86.

Upwork’s report noted the average hourly rate for the top 100 skills in the third quarter was $43.72. That’s higher than the $28 median hourly rate overall for freelancers providing skilled services. And demand for the top 100 skills grew more than 45% year over year in the third quarter with the top 10 growing by more than 260%.

The Upwork 100 skills list is based on skills sought on the its online staffing platform. The analysis to find the 100 fastest-growing skills starts by including only skills that have been in the top 500 in terms of freelancer billings over the past four complete quarters. From that, the 100 fastest-growing skills are ranked based on year-over-year growth rates in freelancer billings for the third quarter of 2019.

Here’s the list of the top 100 skills: