% of Upwork jobs with hires - some numbers

[eldarh78]

Over the last 1.5-2 years, persistent talks about fake jobs and clients posting jobs and not hiring on Upwork have been going on.

Noticing that the big majority of jobs indeed have no hires, I decided to quickly get some actual numbers. I ran a broad search query related to my niche "crypto content writer" and looked at the first 4 pages of the results (10 jobs posted within the last 24hrs plus 30 jobs posted more than 24hrs ago). The search was pretty broad and given Upwork's terrible search results gave me a bunch of results from different areas - even from programming, etc. but that migth be a good thing as it was a more diverse pool of results to judge about. Here's what I can see:

- Jobs posted more than 24 hrs ago (1 to about 4-5 days ago) = 30. Number of those with a hire = 2 (7%).

- Jobs posted within 24hrs (no hires in these ones are quite understandable as they are very recent) = 10. Number with hires = 0 (0%).

Total jobs looked at 40, num with hires = 2 (5%).

Some of the jobs with no hires had clients actively looking, others were totally abandoned by client. Like posted and never looked back, although some of these clients have respectable hire history, with good spend and high hire pct.

I admit, this is a small sample, for the sake of research, post your own numbers please. I must admit in the past (pre-2022, after which the platform went down the drain) I didn't pay that close attention to hire pct but I recall that a far higher pct of jobs had hires. This 7% figure is horrible I think and makes you wonder how Upwork is surviving with filling so little pct of jobs.

[e9b08198]

Thank you, Eldar,

This information is quite intriguing.

I have a question: Are clients required to pay for job postings?

As I understand it, Upwork advises freelancers to use additional connects to demonstrate their interest in job opportunities. However, how can clients express their readiness to hire freelancers?

[eldarh78]

AFAIK, clients don't pay a dime to post a job. They don't even need to verify a payment method to post a job. I think it's intentional on the part of Upwork as the platform earns money when freelancers spend connects to apply/boost, so why not let everyone and their dog post a job, they think. 

[arsalanodesk]

As freelacner, It really awkward to see this post "Client don't need payment when posting a job!"
I am really working hard to get in touch with my upwork account as freelancer, So why client don't have anything to pay when they are posting a job to get the work done. What they think? Without any money they can get work done? DaNm

[48f850a0]

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[khushbu_gohil]

One of the recent scenario I come across client got 24 around application and non of them relevant they actually interview them as well but no one know what have to do in that project...it's strange why my profile is not in suggestion so he can invite me and he easily find me on other marketplaces!

So some keywords matching and algorithm not working properly like I search for illustrator project tane results include voice over, programming nothing related to illustrator right same thing I guess happening with client and they are thinking like nothing relevant for them and they choose other platform and this is the reason behind why client don't hire anyone.

How many enterprise job post have you seen since Feb? Any insight after connects increase 

[arsalanodesk]

Upwork Reputation? Are they needed?

[khushbu_gohil]

Informative analysis and I amazed too

[williamtcooper]

According to Upwork about 50% of the posts end with a hire.

It might be lower now since they published those numbers.

[marjan22]

Yes i think its even more like 86-93% or somewhere in that range.

[williamtcooper]

I am not sure, however agree it sure doesn't appear to be 50% anymore.

[eldarh78]

All of this is my subjective view, but definitely nowhere near 50%, and has never been so, not even remotely. Of course, one can't prove it without looking at all of their jobs (that's an impossibility). I wish there was some form of audit for their claims. In more than 3 years on Upwork I've never seen half of jobs being filled, that'd be a hiring galore. The actual percentage would always be low given how many phantom clients post jobs just to get free ideas, etc. TBH, a median/average Upwork client is definitely not an enitity with a strong intent to hire. 

[yofazza]

I think jobs with hires that are still searchable are only jobs that were set to accept more than 1 freelancer.

I agree that this data can be calculated by people outside the internals of Upwork but you're not doing it exactly right.

[eldarh78]

Jobs with hires that are searchable are only those that are set to accept more than 1 freelancer. What makes you think that? 

Aware us of the right way too please and post the numbers.

[yofazza]

What makes you think that? 

It doesn't quite make sense (for me) if they keep the 'taken' jobs searchable. Also, I think I've experienced seeing jobs disappear from the feed when someone got hired.

post the numbers

"People outside the internals of Upwork" can get the stats by keeping track of the posted jobs, by saving them, and then check to see if someone on that job got hired or not. Also see if the job is gone, etc. Not by searching. But it's not interesting enough for me to do it 😁✌️

[tjmisny]

40 jobs in one niche is really too small of a sample size to make any kind of conclusive statements.  From my own observations, I would be shocked if Upwork's stated 50% hire rate is true.  I would estimate it's under 30% - just an estimate based on the hundreds of jobs I've applied to this year.  But I do think it's higher than 7%.  

[eldarh78]

Yes, 40, or rather more like 30 since it's best to exclude from consideration jobs posted less than 24hrs ago (too recent to judge about hiring) is a very limited sample size. I actually decided to go for 30 as it's a minimum that satisfies a thingy called central limit theorem (where 30 is the smallest size to be able to make any conclusions from a sample to overall population). With 30 you can make SOME conclusions, at least based on that theory, but these conclusions will have a large margin of error. 

I think an ideal scenario would be if someone got over many/hundreds or more of jobs and counted, a kind of approach that Radia points out. But who's got the time for that really. Even then, there would be a certain margin of error. Moreover, I think the hire % fluctuates a lot during diff times, niches, etc. So, that kind of tallying would need to be done over extended periods of time to average the results out.

A more practical way is if users do broad searches in their niches and posted at least 30 results (most recent but excluding jobs posted in the last 24hrs, for example). Took me about 7-8 mins. After many such postings over diff times and niches, we might start getting at least some idea of the actual hire rate.

Or if some benevolent programmer 🙂 writes a script that goes over all the result pages (or at least many of them) automatically and scrapes the values from the "hired" field to easily calculate the %

[mwiggenhorn]

My recent experience is that clients in  my field - legal - post jobs and probably are appalled at the proposals.  Within a day or so after posting, they send me a direct invitation.  So that scenario is not taken into consideration.

[arsalanodesk]

Client always have a benefit here, Rather than freelacer, Because They have money, But freelancer have time, If you multiply it is equal to results, If client like it or not that's upto the client. So Your future is in client's hands on upwork!