In their latest IT freelancer study, market research company Lunendonk asked the ten leading freelance brokers about the sales impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. They expect a decline in sales of three per cent in 2020. ´Compared to other B2B services markets, this is a rather optimistic forecast,´ says Jonas Lunendonk, describing the situation. It would not be surprising, for example, if sales shrank even more in 2020. For example, some service companies are reporting a drop in turnover of more than 30 per cent drop for the second quarter of 2020.

In some areas, however, the Corona crisis also led to increased demand. For instance, experts in cloud technologies were in high demand during the pandemic.

However, revenue expectations for 2021 are again considerably optimistic. For the period after the Corona crisis, digitisation, IT modernisation, cloud and transformation projects will likely result in an increasing number of projects, many requiring freelancers.

Before the pandemic, many companies suffered from a lack of skilled workers. Although this shortage is currently less severe, it will become noticeable again when the economy returns to a growth path.