Spend going through Elance-oDesk by US businesses in 2014 reached $604 million, a 30 percent increase from 2013, the online staffing firm reported today in its 2014 US Online Work Report.

Elance-oDesk’s reported its community crossed the 13.5 million mark by the close of 2014, including 3.8 million businesses and 9.7 million freelancers.

Technology continues to be the largest category of online work at Elance-oDesk, at 50 percent of spend. The four fastest-growing categories of online work are mobile, sales and marketing, admin support, and writing and translation respectively.

“With the rise of the on-demand economy, even talent is shifting online. Businesses spent $941 million hiring online via Elance.com and oDesk.com in 2014 and are increasingly relying on building teams of distributed professionals and hiring flexibly as part of their strategy,” said Rich Pearson, SVP of categories and geographies at Elance-oDesk. “We’re already seeing these shifts in our data, and they point to a number of fascinating trends for 2015 — such as the rise of virtual agencies and a change in the guard on the reigning mobile programming language.”

Elance-oDesk also issued the following work predictions for 2015:

1. Swift will overtake Objective C as the primary app development language.
2. Everyone will live large with their own virtual assistant. There are currently 1.5 million virtual assistants registered across Elance.com and oDesk.com. Virtual assistants earned $50 million in 2014, and as one of the fastest-growing positions hired on Elance-oDesk, that number is expected to increase by 50 percent in 2015.
3. Virtual agencies will surpass the number of traditional agencies. The soaring cost of maintaining a physical office is causing agencies to move online. Improvements in project management, communication tools and a flexible work environment will enable virtual agencies to flourish. Virtual agencies span a range of focuses, but design led the way with 15,000 agencies on Elance-oDesk’s sites and more than $75 million in earnings, followed by software development with 11,000 agencies and $159 million in earnings; marketing with 3,000 agencies and $13.1 million in earnings; and translation with 2,500 agencies and $11.2 million in earnings.
4. Freelance management will become a core skill. As the talent gap for technical skills increases, standout professionals will be those who are adept at managing freelancers and distributed team members. Developers on Elance-oDesk earned more than $486 million last year, the largest category of online work.
5. Neighborhood accounting will go by way of the bookstore. Accounting on Elance-oDesk alone is growing at 40 percent, and we expect this number to increase as cloud-based accounting platforms like Xero take off.
6. Chinese-to-English translation will outpace English-to-Chinese for the first time in history. As their domestic economy stagnates, Chinese businesses are looking to US and Western European markets for growth. Translators who serve this market are in high-demand, growing over 50 percent in the second half of 2014 and making it to the top 10 list of language translation requests.
7. World-class customer service will be the norm, not just for the Fortune 1000. With increased adoption of cloud-based customer service tools and a larger-than-ever pool of premium freelance customer service professionals, 24/7 customer support will be achievable for all businesses, not just the Fortune 1000. In 2014, customer service agents were the fastest-growing position on Elance-oDesk with 92 percent growth, and Zendesk was one of the fastest-growing skills hired, at 145 percent year-over-year growth in 2014.