Souring Economy Gives Tech Freelancers a Lift

Demand for freelance coders notched the second-biggest gain, up 45.5%, followed by back-end developers, up 37.7%, the firm said. Last month, by contrast, new job postings by U.S. employers for full-time IT workers fell 12% from August to roughly 300,000, according to IT trade group CompTIA. Yet beyond cost-cutting efforts, employers say they are responding to a growing talent pool of IT freelancers with niche skills in areas like artificial intelligence, which can be tapped for specific, short-term enterprise-technology tasks. "You're looking for highly specialized skills that you wouldn't particularly want to hire for, if it weren't for a given project," said Balaji Bondili, a managing director at accounting firm Deloitte. Deloitte is a sponsor of CIO Journal.