The rise of the ‘yolo’ freelancer

They’ve decided that you only live once and are taking back control of their working lives after being hit by the pandemic. By Harry Brennan

Y ‘ou only live once” – this is the phrase that encapsulates the attitude of a growing breed of workers that has emerged out of the past year.

They are a loosely defined group of nine-to-fivers who have grown tired of toiling from home. Health scares, furlough and redundancies have shattered their concept of job security. The biggest economic contraction for 300 years, coupled with the prospect of further job losses, has pushed many to rethink how they spend their days, how they earn a living and, in some cases, to finally follow lifelong dreams.

It has led to an explosion in the number of people working for themselves alongside their daily jobs, as they plan how to scale back their office hours or ditch their employer altogether.

Known as “side hustlers”, their number soared by more than two thirds last year, according to PeoplePerHour, the freelancer marketplace. Almost a quarter of a million people joined the site in 2020, up from 136,000 the year before.

Close to one in five of us now operate a “side-hustle” job alongside fulltime employed work, the website found. More than two fifths did it for the extra cash, often in the face of job uncertainty. But more than half said they were just looking for a more flexible life balance, whether they made more or not, polling said. Some 13pc said they wanted to turn their side hustle into a fully fledged business.

Rachel Howlett, 44, worked for decades as a lighting engineer on some of the West End’s biggest shows, including The Phantom of the Opera, before the pandemic hit and she found herself on furlough.

Used to working six days a week, she found some part-time work at a local care home and started to do some freelance writing and gardening work on the side. A few months later, she was made redundant. But instead of finding another theatre job, she used her redundancy money and some rainy day funds to pay off the mortgage on her Berkshire home.

“I am much poorer, but much happier. I realised what I was doing was not what I wanted. Now I am in charge of finding my own jobs, which I balance with my care work, and I no longer have to commute into London. The shock of last year changed my life for the better,” she said.

Holly Walker, 27, started working as a graphic designer on the side when her employer, a clothing company, repeatedly placed her on furlough leave. She moved back in with her parents in Windsor after London shut down. She now faces redundancy at the end of the month.

“I started doing my own work because my job was becoming less and less of a sure thing. I have done jobs for a few clients now and am earning close to £1,000 a month in the best months, which is not far off my furlough pay. But I am saving a lot on rent, which makes up for it,” she said.

“I love being my own boss and losing my job has given me the push to see where I can take my own businesses. Employment is always an option if it doesn’t work out or I want to move back to London and have a little more security,” she added.

Joanne Hutchinson, 44, from Cambridgeshire, wrote and self-published three children’s books during lockdown, alongside her day job in mental health. “Writing was always just a hobby for me but I decided to take the plunge and just do it. I’ve not really made any money yet, but it is something I have always wanted to do. The pay-off is a job that I love and work-life balance that would never be possible in a traditional work arrangement.

“The plan is to carry on writing and I have had interest from people who have asked to turn my characters into merchandise,” she said.

Andrew Chamberlain, of the freelancer trade body IPSE, said the “remarkable increase” in people working for themselves on the side was a function of the extra time many employed people have enjoyed over the past 12 months, with many not working at all. “For some, this trend reflects the need for additional income because of the financial hit of the pandemic. Others have been able to use their extra time to explore hobbies and passions and turn them into added income,” he said.