The latest regional Gigmetar has identified similar trends as the previous measurement, although some minor changes are in evidence. The gig workforce has contracted slightly over the past six months, with wage growth slowing down further. Gender trends have been disparate. Although the share of women in the total freelancer population has increased, women’s pay gap with men has widened. Gender-based differences in hourly rates have seen variations by country. Nevertheless, the changes that did occur were generally minor and did not affect the underlying structure of the gig work market.Read more ...

The region’s digital labour market has been evolving in a global environment fraught with uncertainty and slow growth. International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast a slowdown in global growth to 2.8 percent, with all projections for European and Central Asian economies suggesting widespread vulnerability, especially in terms of investments. Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania have been registering major downward adjustments, whilst Croatia has seen growth in excess of expectations. Whilst employment trends have generally been positive, regional markets remain weighed down by structural inefficiencies such as high inactivity rates, youth out-migration, and lack of relevant skills. Uncertainty in the tech sector, which the WIPO reports having depressed investment in innovation, has to some extent been offset by high expectations for continuing development of generative artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its impact on productivity growth in services and knowledge production. However, most countries in the region are lagging behind in the digital domain in terms of both the digital skills of the population and the use of technologies for business, which has been posing major hurdles to improving economic performance and creating opportunities for workers. Economic, political, and technological turbulence has been having a mixed impact on the digital labour market. Whilst the prevailing economic and technological risks can drive down demand for gig worker services, developments in traditional labour markets have been disincentivising new entrants. Similarly, global market and non-market factors have combined to cause a contraction in the region’s digital work markets, albeit by a modest percentage, whilst expectations for continued growth and final outcomes in 2025 affected by major uncertainty.

Stagnating supply of gig labour. This latest fourth consecutive fall in the overall gig workforce has been relatively minor (at 0.7 percent). Ninety of every 100 workers who left the market had been active in either software dev and tech or creative and multimedia.

Romanian exception. Romania was the sole country in the region to register gig worker growth across all platforms, from 0.5 percent on Guru to 4.8 percent on Freelancer. Albania and North Macedonia have lost the largest percentages of freelancers in this survey.

Contraction in Upwork’s market share. Although Upwork accounts for 55.6 percent of the regional labour market on the top three platforms, it has lost some of its lead. Serbia, Upwork’s largest market, has remained home to 25.6 percent of the regional gig workforce on this platform.

Women gain ground in the digital workforce. Men have been leaving the freelance market more frequently than women (3.5 vs 2.3 percent), which has driven the share of women gig workers in the total population up to 37.3 percent.

Hourly rates[1] have continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace. The region has seen a slowdown in average hourly rate growth to 2 percent. Nevertheless, major national differences were found, with North Macedonia and Bulgaria (at 4.7 and 3.5 percent, respectively) registering the largest increase, whereas Hungary posted a marginal decline of 0.7 percent.

Gig work is now less attractive in countries offering greater opportunities in the traditional labour market. For instance, North Macedonia has as many as 8.3 times more freelancers per capita than Hungary, which has recorded the fewest gig workers per 100,000 population.

[1] ‘Hourly rates’, indicating the asking price of labour posted by gig workers on their online accounts, is used in Gigmetar interchangeably with ‘earnings’.

In the latest measurement, the leading platforms in Southeastern Europe have registered the fourth consecutive contraction, albeit by a marginal 0.7 percent.

Upwork has remained the region’s largest gig marketplace, with nearly 56 of every 100 Southeastern European freelancers using the platform. Nevertheless, other operators have seen some growth as well, with Freelancer adding 4.8 percent and Guru 0.6 percent. Read more ...

Digital platforms followed divergent trends. Both Freelancer and Guru saw labour supply increase. Freelancer registered somewhat higher growth, at 4.8 percent, whilst Guru added no more than 0.6 percent. By contrast, this was the second consecutive survey to record a contraction on Upwork by an average of 3 percent. This figure was, however, still far lower than in the previous survey, when nearly one-fifth of Upwork’s freelancers were found to have left the platform. Although only Upwork lost ground in this survey, having lost 1.3pp of the market, the platform still dominates the regional gig work industry. It accounts for 55.6 percent of all gig workers active on the sample of platforms surveyed, and is, moreover, the largest digital work marketplace by far in all countries of the region, with a share that ranges from nearly one-half of the market in Romania (45.5 percent) and Hungary (47.3 percent) to more than two-thirds (68.2 percent) in Albania.

Minimal changes to market structure. Whilst Upwork has lost some of its share, Guru and Freelancer saw growth. Guru is now home to nearly one-quarter of all regional gig workers (at 24.9 percent), primarily owing to the contraction of Upwork and its own minimal uptick. Freelancer has increased its share to 19.6 percent thanks to its growth, coupled with the decline of Upwork.

Limitations affecting outlook projections. Multiple factors may have affected the accuracy of these estimates. Firstly, there has been a change in the methodology of how gig workers are presented on the various platforms, and, with the procedure not publicly available, the different reports may not be directly comparable. Secondly, the same gig workers may have had multiple profiles on different platforms. The latter issue is not as significant since platforms have an interest in presenting only active workers available to potential employers and therefore update their gig worker databases fairly regularly. As such, even though some workers have profiles open on more than one platform, this does not affect estimates of the actually available workforce, since all those workers are active.

Only Romania saw its gig workforce grow across all regional platforms, with the increase ranging from a modest 0.5 percent on Guru to 4.8 percent on Freelancer. Conversely, the greatest losses were registered by Albania (at 5.3 percent) at North Macedonia (4.3 percent) in both relative and absolute terms – with the two countries shedding some 750 workers over the past six months. Read more ...

Growth and contraction, with exceptions. Nearly identical trends were registered across all countries, with differences only in the pace of developments. The workforce active on Guru increased throughout the region at a modest rate, as evidenced in particular by the example of Romania, where this growth was fastest but amounted to no more than 0.5 percent. Conversely, Freelancer grew at a double-digit pace in Hungary (at 14.5 percent) and Croatia (11.5 percent), as well as by more than 5 percent in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. Albania proved to be the sole exception as it recorded a 1-percent decline on Freelancer. On Upwork, the gig workforce contracted nearly across the board, with the sharpest drop seen in Montenegro (at 8.4 percent), Albania (7.5 percent), and North Macedonia (6 percent), and the smallest decrease registered in Hungary (at 0.3 percent). The exception here was Romania, where the workforce grew by 1 percent.

A little growth, a little more decline. The gig workforce grew in two of the nine countries in making up the region. Hungary recorded a somewhat more pronounced increase, at 3.5 percent, whereas Romania’s growth rate was more modest at 1.8 percent. The platform worker population fell in the remaining seven countries, most markedly in Albania (at 5.3 percent), Montenegro (3.4 percent), and North Macedonia (3.9 percent), followed by Serbia at 1.4 percent; all other markets edged down by under one percent.

Asymmetric workforce distributions by country. The latest changes, coupled with past trends, have cemented Romania’s dominance as the largest gig work supplier, now home to nearly one-quarter (24.8 percent) of the region’s freelancer workforce. Serbia was the only other country with a similarly sizeable share, at 23.9 percent. All other markets reported significantly lower figures, ranging from 10.1 percent in Bulgaria to no more than 2 percent in Montenegro.

The continuing gig work contraction across most of the region meant the workforce continued to fall, reaching a new historic low of 89.585 active gig workers in the latest survey.

Given the size of the countries and the total freelancer workforce, the overall changes were quite small. However, the gig worker population did decline throughout the region except in Romania and Hungary, where it remained the same. Despite having seen a relatively large contraction (at 6.1 percent), North Macedonia still had by far the largest gig workforce of 266 gig workers per 100,000 population.Read more ...

General decline to uncommon stagnation. All countries saw their gig workforces contract save Romania and Hungary, where the freelancer populations stagnated. However, these two countries reported by far the lowest figures, with no more than 37 gig workers per 100,000 population in Hungary and 52 per 100,000 in Romania.

Major differences between countries. The survey identified three broad groups of countries based on their gig workforces relative to population size. The first group, comprising Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia, had under 100, or on average 61, gig workers per 100,000 population. This clearly suggests a distinction between the region’s EU and non-EU countries, implying that gig work was a less attractive alternative in economies that offer more diverse opportunities in conventional labour markets (either at home or abroad). Countries in the second category, namely of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all reported comparably high freelancer numbers, but the figures differed widely, ranging from 185 per 100,000 population in Serbia and Montenegro to 101 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With by far the largest regional gig workforce of 266 per 100,000 population, North Macedonia alone made up the third category: its freelancer population larger by a factor of as much as 8.3 than that of Hungary, the country with the smallest such workforce in the region.

The latest measurement of the digital work market revealed a high degree of stability over the six months preceding the survey. Although the overall gig worker population did decline, growth was nevertheless seen in two occupations, writing and translation (which increased by 1.6 percent) and clerical and data entry (0.6 percent). The remaining four occupations recorded contractions, with the two most numerous – creative and multimedia and software dev and tech – shedding 4.8 and 5.6 percent, respectively. As many as 90 of every 100 workers who left the market came from either of these two occupations.

The gig workers’ engagement level stood at 34.9 percent at the time of the survey, with major variations by country. Albania had the least engaged freelancer population, at 28.2 percent of the total, whilst North Macedonia could boast the most active freelancer workforce, with an engagement rate of 40.3 percent. Read more ...

Clerical and data entry, writing and translation, and sales and marketing support have grown at the expense of the remaining three occupations. The latest survey has revealed some modest changes in how gig workers are distributed across occupations. The growth in the relative importance (in other words, share) of clerical and data entry and writing and translation freelancers in the overall workforce was driven by the increase in their numbers, with the former adding a modest 0.5 percent and the latter a slightly more significant 1.6 percent. Conversely, the increase in the share of sales and marketing support workers was the consequence of fewer of these freelancers leaving the occupation, with the decline amounting to 0.6 percent. The number of gig workers has fallen by an average of 4.7 percent over the remaining three occupations, and here software dev and tech has seen the largest contraction (at 5.9 percent). However, these changes were fairly minor in relative terms: for instance, writing and translation recorded the greatest increase in its relative importance after its share in the overall population rose from 13 to 13.6 percent. Changes of a comparable intensity were also in evidence for occupations whose relative share declined, with the largest fall recorded in software dev and tech, from 26.9 to 26.2 percent.

The share of workers active at the time of the measurement has remained stable. At the time of the survey, more than 17,900 gig workers were active on Upwork, in effect making this dominant regional gig work platform the largest multinational corporation by employment. However, despite these impressive activity rates – where more than one-third of the gig workforce with active profiles (34.9 percent) were actually engaged – the share of active freelancers in the overall population remained virtually unchanged (having edged down by 0.5pp relative to the previous measurement). This finding marks the end of a significant upward trend for the active population, which grew by more than 100 percent over the past year. One conclusion here is that the contraction was not caused by the departure of workers who had the knowledge and skills to find platform work but was rather more likely to be driven by a contraction in the lower-skilled cohort of digital workers or new entrants. Moreover, given the obvious discrepancy between the number of jobs on offer (five million each year) and the number of freelancers on Upwork (over 18 million) – which means that no more than 27.8 percent, on average, find work on the platform – these countries’ gig workers, whose activity rate stood at 34.9 percent at the time of the measurement, seem to possess the skills that allow them to compete successfully at the global level.

Continuity, but with major differences. Dissimilarities between countries in activity rates found in previous measurements have remained significant, with North Macedonia and Serbia leading the field with 40.3 and 39.3 percent of the gig workforce, respectively, engaged on actual projects at the time of the survey. Similarly, both countries are also characterised by the slight decline of 1.4pp in the size of this population relative to the previous measurement. Nevertheless, activity rates have remained quite high right across the region, ranging from 28.2 percent in Albania to 37.2 percent in Montenegro. Although Albania reported by far the lowest activity rate, the country has also made the most progress in recent times, with the number of freelancers engaged on actual projects there increasing by 11.2pp over the past year. A comparison of country trends with past developments has identified a gradual convergence, with differences across the region slowly fading. Put differently, the potentials for gig work are increasingly being utilised in places where they had previously been underused.

Men tended to leave the workforce at a slightly higher rate (3.5 percent) than women (2.3), pushing the share of women in the overall freelancer population to 37.3 percent.

Montenegro and Albania saw particularly large contractions of the female workforce, losing 6.4 and 6.1 percent of their women freelancers, respectively, whilst Hungary registered the largest increase at 7.7 percent. By contrast, the population of men gig workers declined throughout the region, with Montenegro and Albania again seeing the largest losses, of 9.5 and 8.7 percent, respectively.

Women have now become more numerous in professional services, clerical and data entry, and writing and translation. Men still have the edge in the remaining three occupations, but the margins have narrowed. Software dev and tech is the sole exception, where men have registered a slight increase ranging from 3.3 percent in Albania to 8.2 percent in Bulgaria. Read more ...

Women’s participation has risen modestly. According to the latest measurement, the gender gap has narrowed slightly, with the share of women in the South-Eastern European countries surveyed increasing from 37 to 37.3 percent. However small this growth, it does mark a return to the long-term development trajectory characterised by consistent convergence between the genders. In contrast to the previous survey, when women were found to be leaving the digital labour market more often (at 21.9 percent) than their male peers (17.4 percent), in the latest measurement it was men who were more likely to do so (at 3.5 percent as against 2.3 percent for women). In absolute numbers, more than 1,100 male gig workers left the market during this period, 2.6 times the number of women who did so. Nevertheless, although South-Eastern Europe was behind other major digital work markets, such as North America, in terms of gender equality, when compared to other countries and regions, or the global average of 42 percent, it was far more egalitarian than other parts of the world.

Contraction and expansion by gender. The women gig worker population has grown throughout the region in all occupations, save for professional services and software dev and tech, which saw contractions of 8.6 and 8.9 percent, respectively. The other four occupations registered quite balanced and far lower growth, which stood at no more than 1.3 percent on average. By contrast, men recorded minimal increases of 1.5 percent each in professional services and writing and translation, whereas contractions were less uniform, ranging from 5 percent in creative and multimedia and 4.7 percent in software dev and tech to a less pronounced 2.6 percent in sales and marketing support and a minimal 1.9 percent in clerical and data entry.

Global factors primarily drove contractions. Professional services was the sole occupation to see a decline in the share of women across all countries, but the differences were vast. Even though the fall reached the double digits in three nations, the rates were quite uneven, from 28.2 percent in Montenegro to 17.5 percent in Albania and 11.2 percent in Bulgaria. The contraction was far less pronounced in other countries, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania, where the female workforce fell by a mere 0.1 and 3.2 percent, respectively. An identical trend was identified for men in creative and multimedia and software dev and tech (except in Croatia, where the number of men in the workforce remained virtually unchanged). Here, only Montenegro and Croatia registered a decline of their male creative and multimedia freelancer populations, which fell by 20.7 and 15.8 percent, respectively, as opposed to the decline in other countries, which averaged 3.7 percent without major fluctuations. Although the fall in software dev and tech was on average smaller, it did extend into the double digits in Albania and Hungary, at 12.6 and 10.5 percent, respectively. Since these occupations reported contractions across all countries without exception, the development can be interpreted partly as the effects of external factors associated with worldwide demand or competition that have impacted the two genders in different ways, as women seemed to have more difficulty finding work in professional services and men found it less easy to gain employment in creative and multimedia.

Country-specific responses for women freelancers. Mixed results were found for all occupations except professional services, with no clear pattern that could help associate these developments with any specific factors. It was only in sales and marketing support that more countries saw growth then registered a decline (five vs four), with these increases also being much stronger than the contractions. Conversely, only three countries each saw growth in creative and multimedia and writing and translation. Despite the contractions and major differences between countries, some economies recorded unusually high growth rates (in excess of 20 percent): for instance, Hungary’s freelancer population rose by more than one-third (36.7 percent) in clerical and data entry, Montenegro saw growth of 23.6 percent in sales and marketing support, and in North Macedonia the female gig workforce in creative and multimedia increased by as much as 69.2 percent, the greatest change for women in a single occupation in any of the region’s countries. In contrast to these positive trends, Montenegro witnessed a major drop in the population of its women gig workers in professional services (28.2 percent), whilst Albania recorded a similar decrease in software dev and tech (at 26.3 percent).

Country-specific responses for men freelancers. Outside of creative and multimedia and software dev and tech, changes in the size of the gig workforce followed country-specific trajectories. Here, professional services and clerical and data entry grew in most countries, whilst the remaining two occupations, sales and marketing support and writing and translation, maintained generally negative trends (registering a fall in five countries and growth in four). Divergent rates of growth and decline in individual occupations by country were less pronounced in the male than the female gig workforce. Particularly large-scale growth (of more than one-fifth of the population) was seen in clerical and data entry in Montenegro (at 23.3 percent), the largest registered change in the size of an occupation throughout the region’s gig workforce, as well as in writing and translation in Romania (23 percent). In contrast to these positive developments, the male freelancer population contracted sharply in creative services in Montenegro (at 20.7 percent), clerical and data entry in Croatia (19.8 percent), and writing and translation in Albania (21 percent), the largest decline in any occupation and country.

Growth of average posted hourly rates continued to decelerate across the region, with the increase standing at a modest 2 percent in the latest measurement. Nevertheless, major differences were found between countries: North Macedonia and Bulgaria saw more pronounced growth, at 4.7 and 3.5 percent, respectively, whilst Hungary edged down by 0.7 percent. Croatia remained the country with the highest hourly rates demanded by freelancers of US$27, whilst North Macedonia’s rates remained the lowest at below 20 dollars (US$19.8) per hour.

In contrast to the previous measurement, the latest survey registered an increase in hourly rates demanded by both genders. This growth was somewhat higher for men (at 2.2 percent) than for women (1.8 percent), leading to a slight widening of the gender gap, as women were able to earn 83.1 percent of what their male peers could. However, the gender pay gap narrowed in North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia, whilst North Macedonia achieved the greatest degree of gender equality, with women making on average 88.3 percent of men’s hourly rates.Read more ...

Hourly rates demanded by gig workers continued to decline. Throughout the region, incomes rose by 2 percent on average, slower than in the previous survey (when the growth rate had been 3 percent). The findings were uneven by country, with average posted hourly rates edging down only in Hungary, by 0.7 percent. However, growth in hourly rates was slower than in the previous survey not only on average across the region, but in the individual countries as well. Just how modest the increase was is best illustrated by the fact that hourly rates did not grow by more than US$1 in any of the countries surveyed.

Croatia reported the highest average incomes. Although hourly rates grew unevenly across the region, the difference in pace was insufficient to change the relative rankings. The latest measurement once again found Croatia had the highest average posted hourly rates, whilst Macedonia remained the region’s sole economy with hourly rates that averaged under US$20, despite having seen tangible growth (of 4.7 percent). Put differently, regional differences have remained quite high, with gig workers in North Macedonia earning on average rates that are lower by as much as 29 percent, or US$7.8, than those commanded by their Croatian peers.

Growth was not registered across the board. Men’s average hourly rates increased in all countries without exception, whereas women saw their hourly rates fall in Montenegro (by 6.5 percent), Croatia (3.5 percent), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.9 percent), and, minimally, Hungary (0.6 percent). In the remaining countries, female freelancers’ rates saw feeble growth, with the exception of Macedonia (where the increase amounted to 7.1 percent) and, to a lesser extent, Serbia (6.1 percent), followed by Bulgaria (3.8 percent) and North Macedonia (3.2 percent). The rates remained unchanged in Hungary.

The gender pay gap widened, whilst women gig workers’ hourly rates fell to 83.1 percent of men’s. This development was driven by slower income growth for women, which stood at 1.8 percent compared to 2.2 percent for men. Nevertheless, even taking into account these findings, gender disparity in the region remains among the lowest in the world.

The gender pay gap increased, with some exceptions. Relatively slight changes, coupled with somewhat divergent trends by gender, meant the various countries registered dissimilar developments in the gender pay gap. The gulf between the genders narrowed in Romania, North Macedonia, and Serbia, but it was only in North Macedonia that men saw their incomes increase appreciably (by 7.1 percent). Conversely, in Albania the wage growth for men was higher, at 1.6 percent, than that of women, which stood at 0.3 percent, whereas in Bulgaria the disparity was somewhat more pronounced, as, there, men’s hourly rates grew on average more than women’s, at 3.8 percent vs 2.4 percent. In the remaining countries, the widening of the gender pay gap was the outcome of divergent trends, with men’s average hourly rates rising as women’s pay fell. The intensity of this effect was also significantly different in this group: it was nearly invisible in Hungary (where the gender gap widened by no more than 0.6pp) but much more prominent in the remaining three countries, ranging from 3pp in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 6.4pp in Croatia to as much as 12.7pp in Montenegro, which became the sole country where women were able to earn less than three-quarters of what their male peers could, and as such the economy with the widest gulf in earnings between the genders.

Gigmetar^TM is the first instrument that describes the geography of digital work in Serbia and the region in terms of gender, income, and most common occupations. It is a result of the efforts made by the Public Policy Research Centre (CENTAR) to shed more light on the work on online platforms.

The Public Policy Research Centre (CENTAR) is a team of innovative researchers and digital enthusiasts investigating the future of work and development of the digital economy in Serbia and South-East Europe.

Contact: gigmetar@publicpolicy.rs