Group of executives sitting together and having a meeting in the office. gettyThis past month, staffing leader Randstad acquired AI-powered digital talent marketplace platform Torc, signaling a new era of the freelance economy that promises to embed freelance into the broader talent ecosystem.The pandemic kickstarted the recent growth that we’ve seen in the freelance economy. In the US alone, there was a 90% increase in the number of freelancers between 2020 and 2023. We are not talking about one-time gigs: some 4.6 million individuals are making a viable salary of over $100,000 as independent freelancers.But while the number of individuals choosing to be self-employed rather than employed full-time has grown at a constant rate, corporate adoption has lagged.The interest is there. 65% of executives in 2023 planned to increase their reliance on external workers. However, freelance talent platforms haven’t scaled adoption in line with interest, and a key reason is that companies haven’t been able to reconcile freelance hiring (seen as niche, risky, and a “rogue spend”) with a safe, compliant, and planned talent strategy

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