The beginning of 2025 saw major disturbances, both globally and in the national economic and political environment. Nevertheless, Serbia continued recording robust economic growth, forecast by the IMF to stand at 3.5 percent in 2025, a fall of 0.7 percentage points (pp) relative to the December 2024 projections.

Modest decline in gig workers. Three percent of Serbia’s gig workers have left Upwork, the country’s most popular online platform, over the previous six months

Huge growth in demand for long-term contracts. As many as 43.1 percent of Serbian gig workers now prefer long-term business opportunities

Increase in activity rates. As many as 43 in 100 gig workers registered on platforms at the time of the measurement were active on actual projects, an increase of 1.5 percentage points relative to the previous survey.

Smallest region was also the most vulnerable. The gig labour supply contracted by 7.2 percent in the Šumadija and Western Serbia region.

Only one occupation saw growth. In an exception to the general downward trend, sales and marketing support was the sole occupation to register an increase in gig workers, at 3.1 percent.

Rising incomes and narrowing gender gap. The average (demanded) hourly rate continued to rise at 3 percent peace, reaching a historic high of US$24.4, with the gender gap narrowed by 1.2 percentage points to see women earn 82.5 percent of the men’s average hourly rate.

The internal political crisis over the student protests, coupled with many global risks, especially the trade tensions between the US, EU, and China and adverse developments in Serbia’s key export markets (especially Germany) could additionally depress economic trends in 2025.

These developments have indirectly affected gig work as well. Healthy economic growth has brought better and more diverse opportunities in Serbia’s traditional labour market, which may mean individuals are less likely to be active on global online work platforms. This trend was especially borne out by employment figures for Q4 2024, showing an increase of 1.1pp relative to the same period one year previously to 51.4 percent. Conversely, the state of the tech sector, which continued seeing spectacular growth rates, including a 19 percent increase in exports of ICT services over the first nine months of 2024 relative to the same period in 2023, suggests the sector is still able to absorb additional skilled labour, thus reducing the number of workers offering their services on global digital platforms.

Global economic, geopolitical, and regulatory developments pose the key set of both short-term and long-term challenges for Serbian gig workers and affect demand for their services. Here, the global economy has been facing a whole slew of issues, with scientific, technological, and production dimensions of innovation capabilities, as outlined in the latest 2024 WIPO report, suggesting the world has either entered or is slowly entering a stage of less pronounced economic and technological growth. These developments are certain to affect demand for gig work, as many employers on global online platforms are tech firms and innovative companies, a large number of which have slashed their research and development (R&D) budgets.

Despite these economic and geopolitical uncertainties, reinforced by trade disputes between the US and other leading global economies, the supply of labour on global digital platforms is expected to continue growing. This gig workforce will come from regions with large labour pools which the traditional labour market is unable to absorb yet which are able to offer the knowledge and skills in global demand at acceptable prices. The significance of populous countries for the overall labour supply is especially highlighted by the continuing decline in Serbia’s share in the global online workforce from 2.2 percent in 2022 to 0.95 percent in 2024, meaning the country has now dropped out of the top 15 states by this metric, whilst India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan accounted for 52.5 percent of the world’s gig labour supply.Read more ...

Despite negative environmental factors, the growing demand for gig work continues to be driven by increasingly accelerating digitalisation, to which companies are adapting by transforming their business models, coupled with the ever-growing use of technology and its impact on a variety of business processes, from procurement to logistics and production to marketing and sales. However, this growth in demand is set to be non-linear, as the market will remove workers who lack the requisite technical knowledge and digital skills. Tellingly, companies are willing to pay on average 45 percent greater salaries to hire people with AI skills and knowledge.

Over the past six months, national and global factors have had an adverse impact on the supply of gig work on Upwork, the most popular freelancer platform both in Serbia and the region. Nevertheless, as the decline has been minimal (with the number of active gig workers contracting by no more than 3 percent), the overall effect is rather one of stagnation, in particular when compared to the previous survey, in which the active gig workforce had fallen by 18.7 percent. These trends in Serbia’s gig work market are the expected outcomes of a variety of factors. The unusually large increase in labour supply seen over the past several years was always going to reach its limits, a trend only accelerated by developments in the traditional labour market. The dwindling labour supply, coupled with relatively favourable market conditions, have been prompting gig workers to leave the freelance market and seek employment with Serbian and foreign companies. Continuing out-migration has also contributed to these developments, with between 25,000 and 27,000 people leaving Serbia every year to settle abroad permanently.

The last survey found external uncertainties were reflected mainly in two aspects. Firstly, the number of workers active on projects at the time of the measurement has increased to 43.1 percent of the overall freelancer workforce, a 1.5pp increase on the previous survey, solely due to greater engagement by workers with experience of platform work. As such, the shrinking of the labour supply has been paralleled by the growth in the number of workers able to get jobs on the platform, and these have been exclusively experienced freelancers. This is indirect confirmation of the competitiveness of Serbia’s gig workers, especially in view of intense pressure from global competitors: the latest estimates put the number of gig workers active on Upwork at more than 18 million. Conversely, the market was less able to accept new gig workers, as evidenced by the slight decline of their share in the population of freelancers engaged on projects at the time of the measurement.

The second, much more pronounced, change was driven by the major U-turn in Serbian gig workers’ preferences for long-term working relationships with employers. As opposed to the previous survey, when no more than 12.9 percent of all freelancers reported being prepared to accept long-term employment, in the latest measurement this figure has risen to 44.9 percent. Seemingly, the advantages of flexibility conferred by a freelancing career are proving unable to offset the risks posed by the uncertain environment, driving a huge increase in the number of workers who prefer stability to freedom.

Interestingly, 62.3 percent of all freelancers reporting a preference for standard formal employment have had previous experience with platform work, in contrast to the 90 percent recorded in the previous survey. This finding suggests, firstly, that platform work may be associated with restrictions and shortcomings that have caused many experienced freelancers to seek long-term employment. Secondly, the large increase in inexperienced platform workers looking to leave the gig work market may indicate they view platforms as places to find long-term employment, similar to job seeking in the traditional labour market. From the employers’ perspective, these changes matter as they help them design their firms’ business processes to take greater advantage of long-term gig worker engagement, which could allow these companies to achieve comparative advantage in the global competition for talent and leverage gig work to improve their performance.

Continuing measurement of the gig population by region reveals the largest part of these workers (84.1 percent) live and work in 28 Serbian cities and towns, with an incremental increase of 0.1pp in their share. The mix of skilled workers and infrastructure, such as co-working spaces, that these locations offer have been the key drivers of increasing gig workforce agglomeration.

The freelancer population has declined throughout the country, albeit with major regional differences. The fall has ranged from 7.2 percent in the least populous region of Šumadija and Western Serbia, to no more than 0.8 percent in Southern and Eastern Serbia.Read more ...

Overall statistics. The latest measurements show Belgrade accounted for 40.9 percent of the total freelancer population, followed by Novi Sad at 13.4 percent, Niš at 8.4 percent, and Kragujevac at no more than 2.2 percent.

Apart from these main administrative centres, gig workers accounted for more than 1 percent of the total in another 11 cities and towns, namely Subotica, Pančevo, Kraljevo, Sombor, Čačak, Zrenjanin, Kruševac, and Sombor. Leskovac was a new entrant, with Čačak dropping out of the top tier.

Administrative centres and large conurbations. Data for administrative centres of NUTS2 regions bear out the assumption that gig workers are increasingly concentrated in major conurbations, which were home to 64.9 percent of all freelancers. Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Niš increased their shares slightly, whilst the relative importance of Kragujevac fell slightly.

Trends. Although the latest measurement showed gig workers were marginally more concentrated in urban areas, this increase has not been linear. Eleven of the 28 Serbian cities and towns saw their relative shares decrease, whilst the other 17 registered growth. These findings corroborate the trend towards greater freelancer aggregation in urban centres, especially those where the gig workforce was already numerous.

Gender structure and regional differences. The gender structure has remained nearly unchanged, with only slight regional variations. The contraction in the gig workforce was nearly completely linear in Belgrade for both genders, whilst in Vojvodina women were slightly more likely to leave the platform work market. By contrast, Šumadija and Western Serbia saw much more women (12.1 percent) leave the gig workforce than men (at 5.2 percent). Southern and Eastern Serbia was unique in reporting the smallest contraction in the freelancer workforce (of 0.8 percent), driven by the slight increase in women gig workers of 1.2 percent in comparison with a fall of 1.6 percent in the number of their male peers.

The charts in this report show the distribution of gig workers by occupation according to the Online Labour Index (OLI) taxonomy developed by the Oxford Internet Institute. The six occupations covered are professional services, clerical and data entry, creative and multimedia, sales and marketing support, software dev and tech, and writing and translation.

The past six months were marked by a decline in the population across all occupations, for an overall drop of nearly 400 gig workers, or 3 percent. This fall was registered across all occupations, with the sole exception of sales and marketing support, where the gig workforce increased by a minimal 3.1 percent.

Although the contraction was distributed fairly equally across occupations, clerical and data entry recorded the largest drop at 5.7 percent. The best paid occupations, software dev and tech and professional services, proved the most resilient, witnessing a fall in the gig workforce of 2.4 percent on average. Read more ...

Not all occupations contracted equally. All occupations apart from sales and marketing support saw their numbers decline, but there were otherwise no major differences between them. One in two freelancers who left the market came from creative and multimedia (49.9 percent), which was only to be expected given the widespread popularity of this occupation in Serbia and the fact that it contracted at a greater rate (4.1 percent) than the average for the Serbian freelancer population (of 3 percent). Clerical and data entry saw the greatest fall, of 5.7 percent, whilst professional services recorded the smallest decline of 2.3 percent.

Changes in the relative importance of occupations. Limited variations in contraction rates have also had limited effects on the structure of the market by occupation. Professional services and writing and translation saw their shares remain unchanged relative to the previous measurement, whilst sales and marketing support and software dev and tech registered slight increases – in the former case due to a marginal increase in the freelancer workforce, and in the latter because of a smaller contraction compared to other occupations.

Stability, a salient trait of the market. In contrast to previous trends, which suggested either large-scale expansion and growth or restructuring driven by major contractions, stability was the key hallmark identified in the latest measurement: there were no large differences or changes between either occupations or their relative shares. This constancy suggests the long-term development of the Serbian market is driven to a far larger extent by the ability of existing gig workers to adapt to global demand than by the entry of new freelancers and their integration into the digital work market. Moreover, unchanging shares of software dev and tech and professional services in the total, as well as the slight growth in the share of sales and marketing freelancers, may point to substantial transformation of companies’ business models based on the well-established practice of using global talent, which has kept demand for this type of services stable and predictable.

For the first time since Gigmetar surveys were launched, the latest reporting period saw no changes in the gender structure of the digital labour market: as in the previous measurement, women freelancers accounted for 33.1 percent of all gig workers. However, the gender balance of Serbia’s digital labour market has remained quite favourable when compared to other countries and regions worldwide, albeit standing at below the global average of 42 percent.Read more ...

The fall that changed nothing. The latest measurement has found slight gender-based differences in how the gig workforce has contracted: the number of women has gone down by 3.2 percent, with men freelancers leaving the market at a lower rate of 2.8 percent. these developments have meant the share of women in the gig workforce has almost completely stabilised at 33.1 percent, the same as in the previous survey. Even though in Serbian women account for substantially more gig workers than in some of the largest markets such as India (where women make up 27.4 percent) and Pakistan (14.2 percent), Serbia lags far behind the world’s most egalitarian markets such as the US (50.7 percent) and France (51.3 percent).

Who has left the market? The decline in the gig worker population has not affected the structure of the workforce in terms of experience with platform work, with 60 out of every 100 freelancers reporting such experience. This suggests that, over the past months, equal numbers of both experienced and inexperienced workers, and both men and women, have been leaving the market. These trends can be explained, at least partially, by market conditions, which proved equally restrictive for both well-established platform workers and new entrants, as well as by developments in the local labour market and alternative working arrangements (such as bilateral remote work contracts) that guaranteed working conditions better than those available with platform work.

Whereas the contracting digital labour market has had a less visible impact on structural aspects such as the overall structure of occupations and gender balance, individual occupations have seen changes to their gender ratios. Women gig workers have remained more numerous in clerical and data entry but declined to below one-half in professional services. Writing and translation has emerged as a new area with a larger presence of women, due to both the departure of men and an influx of new women entrants.

Although women have not become dominant in sales and marketing support, female workers did make up 87 percent of all new entrants into this occupation, which incidentally also saw the largest increase in women (of 6.8), whereas professional services saw the largest influx of men (at 1.4 percent). Conversely, men were more likely to leave writing and translation (-9.3 percent), whilst women were likelier to retire from clerical and data entry (at -8.5 percent). Read more ...

Similarities between genders. Men and women were nearly completely equally represented in professional services, clerical and data entry, and writing and translation. Here, women were slightly more numerous in clerical and data entry (by 8.1 percent) and writing and translation (6.8 percent), whereas the share of men was greater by 8.3 percent in professional services.

Differences between genders. Major dissimilarities between genders were found in sales and marketing support, creative and multimedia, and software dev and tech, although with differences in scale. Men outnumbered women by 38.5 percent in sales and marketing support, but the gap has narrowed from the previous measurement when it had stood at 46.9 percent. The gender gulf has remained the widest in software dev and tech, where only 13 out of every 100 workers were women. A more moderate yet still significant gap was seen in creative and multimedia, where men outnumbered women by nearly two to one (or by 92.9 percent), a slight increase relative to the previous measurement as women were more likely to leave the gig work market (at 4.9 percent) than men (3.6 percent).

Uneven directions and extent of change to gender structure. The evolution of the gender gap ought to be viewed from two perspectives, namely the direction of the change and its extent. Clerical and data entry, creative and multimedia, and software dev and tech all saw identical downward trends for both genders, whereas sales and marketing support alone registered an increase in both men and women freelancers. Conversely, whilst in professional services the number of gig workers increased marginally (by 1.4 percent), women became less numerous (by 6.4 percent). The occupations that saw contractions recorded slightly more extensive changes for women than for men. By contrast, sales and marketing support registered a much greater increase for women (6.8 percent) than for men (0.7 percent).

Women evenly distributed across occupations. With the exception of creative and multimedia, which accounted for a fairly stable share of the total female gig worker population (at 37 percent), there were minimal differences in how women were distributed across the other occupations. Women tended to be less well represented in professional services (at 8.4 percent) and software dev and tech (9.8 percent), where a slight downward trend was in evidence relative to the previous measurements, whilst shares of other occupations ranged from 11.4 percent (sales and marketing support) to 16.9 percent (clerical and data entry). By contrast, men were broadly concentrated in two occupations that accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total population (or 72.4 percent), namely software dev and tech and creative and multimedia, whilst none of the remaining four occupations accounted for a share greater than 9 percent. This structure suggests that the women’s segment of the market would be more resilient and suffer a less serious contraction in the event of a major exogenous shock driving down demand for some software development services.

The share of women’s income in total gig worker earnings has fallen by 1 percentage point in the latest measurement, with women accounting for 22.9 percent of aggregate income on the platform. This finding was largely the result of the gender pay gap and the greater relative representation of men in better-paid occupations, whilst this measurement has identified no impact of changes to the gender structure.Read more ...

Factors affecting aggregate income. Freelancer income was determined by the interplay of multiple factors acting in concert: the large preponderance of men over women freelancers, which may enhance the effects of sorting; greater concentration of men in better paid occupations; differences in hourly rates, with men on average being able to earn more; greater inclination of women to work part-time; and, lastly, greater than average engagement rate of women (at 33.9 percent), a factor that works in the opposite direction from the remaining ones.

Causes underlying the decline in women freelancer income. The latest measurement has seen the continuation of a downward trend in the share of women’s gig work earnings in aggregate freelancer income. The most significant of the many potential reasons for this are the general preponderance of men freelancers, greater concentration of men in better paid occupations, greater inclination of women to work part-time, and and large discrepancies between men and women in the upper parts of the distribution (meaning amongst the best paid freelancers and those generally active on platforms without interruption).

Although the latest measurement has revealed an increase in demanded hourly rates of an additional 3 percent, this growth has halved relative to the previous survey. The average hourly rate demanded by Serbian gig workers stood at US$24.4.

Although all occupations saw rising hourly rates, not all grew at the same pace. Sales and marketing support registered the largest increase, with hourly rates growing by 8.5 percent, whilst the smallest change was seen in writing and translation, at no more than 0.8 percent.

The gender gap for hourly rates has narrowed. Women freelancers were able to earn on average 82.5 percent of the hourly rates demanded by men, an increase of 1.2pp relative to the previous measurement, but still a far cry from the findings registered one year ago, when women gig workers could demand 86.9 percent of men’s average hourly rates.

The gender pay gap was present across all occupations. This gap was at its widest in software dev and tech, where women earned no more than 67.9 percent of the hourly rates demanded by their male peers, but was, conversely, almost non-existent in clerical and data entry and creative and multimedia, where women could make 99.3 and 98.2 percent, respectively, of the average hourly rates demanded by men. Interestingly, software dev and tech was only the fourth best paid occupation for women (with an average hourly rate of US$20.5) in spite of being the best paid occupation for men (who commanded an average hourly rate of US$30.1).Read more ...

Growth in average hourly rates. This has been the sixth consecutive measurement to identify an increase in hourly rates, although this income growth has slowed, on average, from 3 to 5.9 percent. Given the major external business and regulatory uncertainties that have had a primarily adverse effect on wage growth (with the exception of inflation and inflationary sentiment), the growth in average hourly rates clearly seems to be driven mainly by demand-side factors, including the re-orientation of companies’ business models towards greater reliance on the engagement of global talent. Although Serbian freelancers’ hourly rates were greater than the South-Eastern European average of US$23, they were nevertheless 9.5 percent lower than the rates commanded by their Western European peers and amounted to no more than 43.6 percent of the average in the best-developed market, that of the US. That being said, large differences were identified between occupations, with freelancers in writing in translation and clerical and data entry facing the direst predicament, as their hourly rate rates stood at 57.5 percent of the average for South-Eastern Europe, and gig workers in software dev and tech commanding the highest hourly rates, 26.1 percent more than the average for South-Eastern Europe or 7.5 percent more than the average for Western European freelancers.

Demand drove income growth. In contrast to the previous measurement, where different occupations saw changes in different directions, the latest measurement was characterised by growth across all occupations, although not all areas grew at the same scale. Sales and marketing support saw the greatest growth, with hourly rates rising by 8.5 percent, whereas the increase in writing and translation was the lowest, at no more than 0.8 percent. A look at changes to average incomes through the lens of labour supply trends leads to two key conclusions. Firstly, monetary incentives, such as the increasing cost of labour, are no longer sufficient to keep workforces on platforms, as the number of gig workers has been declining regardless of the growth in hourly rates. This development has largely been driven by both external factors (efforts to cope with global competition, where the supply of labour has consistently exceeded demand for it) and internal ones, where other business opportunities in the traditional labour market and the shortcomings associated with gig work have been deterring individuals from building careers in freelancing. Secondly, by way of an exception from the first conclusion, if a sufficiently large monetary incentive does appear, there will be a nearly simultaneous increase in gig workers, such as the one that occurred in sales and marketing support. An additional explanation is provided by the potentially major differences between the (higher) hourly rates officially demanded by the workers and the (lower) rates actually charged by them, which bring into question the significance of any growth in freelancers’ hourly rates.

Gender-based differences between occupations. Writing and translation was the sole occupation to see a divergence in hourly rate trends for men and women, with female freelancers registering a fall of 4.9 percent and their male peers recording growth of 6.7 percent. All other occupations could be divided into two categories. The first group, where men’s hourly rates grew more than women’s, was comprised of clerical and data entry and software dev and tech, although the differences were small: in software dev and tech, hourly rates demanded by men increased by 1.9 percent vs 1.2 percent for women, whilst in clerical and data entry the difference was somewhat more pronounced but still not large, at 3.3 percent for women and 4.9 percent for men. The remaining three occupations, professional services, creative and multimedia, and software dev and tech, saw the growth of women’s hourly rates outstrip that of men’s. In professional services, women’s average hourly rates rose by 6.3 percent vs 1.4 percent for men, whilst in creative and multimedia the increase for women stood at 5.5 percent vs no more than 0.4 percent for their male peers. Sales and marketing was the sole occupation with minimal gender-based differences, where women’s hourly rates increased by 8.8 percent and those of men by 8.6 percent.

How large are the (potential) incomes? The combined effect of the dissimilar growth of hourly rates which favoured women reduced the overall gender pay gap from 81.3 to 82.5 percent. However, women freelancers were not able to earn more than their male peers in any single occupation, with the gap ranging from 32.1 percent in software dev and tech to near parity in clerical and data entry, where women demanded rates lower by just 0.7 percent than men. Assuming a man worked full time (176 hours) as a freelancer for an entire month, he would be able to earn just US$16 more in clerical and data entry, whilst the difference in software dev and tech would amount to as much as US$1,703. The differences in other occupations were not insignificant either, ranging from US$78 in creative and multimedia to US$655 in sales and marketing support. In conclusion, regardless of the general convergence in incomes for both genders, there remained substantial differences in absolute terms across most occupations.

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