Independent work is no longer just a side-gig phenomenon. It is increasingly being treated as a structured small-business path, especially in professional, creative, educational, and information-based sectors.
A new report by The Kaplan Group analyzed two trend lines behind that shift: U.S. search interest, which is rising fastest for terms like “start freelancing” and “freelance business,” and federal data showing a large and growing base of solo businesses across the country. Together, they show freelancing behaving less like casual side work and more like small-business formation.
Freelancing matters to businesses because every freelancer is also a vendor, contractor, or microbusiness operating in the broader B2B economy. For companies that hire independent workers, and for agencies that support them, the rise of solo businesses affects payment practices, risk management, compliance, and receivables exposure.
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Key Takeaways
- Search interest for “start freelancing” rose from an average of 18.4 five years ago to 61.7 in the latest 12 months, a roughly 235% increase, based on the Google Trends data compiled for this study.
- The U.S. had about 30.4 million nonemployer establishments in 2023, generating approximately $1.75 trillion in receipts, according to the Census Bureau’s 2023 Nonemployer Statistics.
- The largest U.S. nonemployer sector in 2023 was Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, with about 4.08 million establishments and roughly $234.3 billion in receipts.
Public Interest in Freelancing Is Becoming More Business-Like
Interest in freelancing is shifting toward more practical and business-oriented queries, especially around how to get started and how to operate independently as a real business. The biggest gains came from “start freelancing” and “freelance business,” which are more meaningful than general awareness terms because they reflect intent.
The timing adds another layer. From 2021 through 2023, keyword averages climbed steadily, with ‘start freelancing’ more than doubling, before leveling off in 2024. Then 2025 became the breakout year. Google Trends scores search interest on a 0 to 100 scale, where 100 represents peak popularity for a term over the period studied, so the numbers show relative interest rather than raw search counts.
“Start freelancing” rose from 26.2 in 2024 to 50.4 in 2025, “freelancing” increased from 24.5 to 35.7, “freelance” moved from 50.3 to 58.1, and “freelance business” climbed from 22.3 to 42.3. Peak timing suggests a progression in behavior: beginner-focused terms peaked in July 2025, while “freelance business” and “freelance” peaked later, in March 2026, implying that early curiosity may have evolved into more serious business interest.
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As more people move from exploring freelancing to running it like a business, clear contracts become essential for setting expectations, protecting their work, and getting paid.
Additional resource: What California businesses and freelancers need to include in a freelance contract ↗
Additional resources: How to follow up on payment without damaging the client relationship ↗
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A Massive Solo-Business Base Behind Freelancing
The Census Bureau’s 2023 Nonemployer Statistics show that the U.S. already has a huge solo-business economy. In 2023, the country had about 30.4 million nonemployer establishments that generated roughly $1.75 trillion in receipts. A nonemployer business is a company with no paid employees, making this one of the strongest federal proxies for freelancers, independent contractors, solo consultants, creators, and one-person service businesses.
The largest nonemployer sector in the U.S. in 2023 was Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, with about 4.08 million establishments and around $234.3 billion in receipts. This sector includes many of the most recognizable forms of high-skill freelance work, including consulting, design, marketing, writing, accounting, technical services, and research-oriented work.
Taken together, these sectors account for roughly 7.1 million nonemployer establishments, or about 23% of all U.S. nonemployer businesses, based on the sector totals assembled from Census data for this analysis. That makes the search trend more meaningful: people are not just becoming interested in freelancing in theory, but in sectors where solo professional and creative work already has real scale.
Top Nonemployer Business Sectors by Scale and Receipts
States With the Deepest Freelance Footprint
State-level Census data shows two different maps of freelance strength. By absolute number of nonemployer establishments, the biggest states are California (about 3.5 million), Texas (3.1 million), Florida (2.9 million), and New York (2.0 million). Together, these four states account for roughly 38% of all U.S. nonemployer businesses. They dominate because they combine large populations, strong business formation, and deep service‑sector economies, with especially large numbers of solo firms in professional, creative, educational, and information‑based fields that are effectively freelance‑adjacent businesses. California alone is home to nearly 1 million freelance-adjacent nonemployer businesses, and New York adds another 544,000.
But when the focus shifts from size to concentration, a different pattern emerges. States such as Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont, New Hampshire, Utah, Colorado, California, Connecticut, and New York have some of the highest shares of freelance-adjacent sectors within their nonemployer economies, at roughly 27% to 30%, well above the national average of about 23.5%, according to the state comparisons compiled for this study. Oregon leads the country at 29.7%, even though its total nonemployer base of about 329,000 is a fraction of the biggest states’.
The two maps do not always overlap. Texas and Florida rank among the largest nonemployer economies in the country, but their freelance-adjacent shares, at 19.5% and 20.2%, fall below the national average. California and New York are the only states that appear on both lists, combining massive scale with above-average concentration. At the other end, Mississippi (16.8%), Arkansas (17.3%), and Louisiana (18.2%) have the thinnest freelance footprints, at barely more than half of Oregon’s rate.
Fresh Evidence of Freelance Growth
The official labor-market benchmarks still undercount the true scale of independent work, but they show the same directional shift toward freelancing and gig activity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ primary-job independent contractor measure reached roughly 11.9 million workers in July 2023, or 7.4% of total employment, a narrowly defined group that excludes most side gigs and supplemental freelance work. In contrast, the Federal Reserve’s 2024 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking found that 20% of U.S. adults performed some type of gig work in the prior month, up from 16% in 2021, and that only about one in five of those gig workers considered it their main job. That gap between primary-job contractors and broader gig participation highlights how much independent work happens outside traditional classification.
Survey-based studies continue to show a far larger universe of independent workers than official contractor counts. The 2025 MBO Partners State of Independence report estimated 72.9 million independent workers in the U.S. in 2025, a slight increase from 72.7 million in 2024, and recorded a new high of 5.6 million independents earning more than $100,000 annually, up sharply from 4.7 million the prior year. Upwork’s 2025 Future Workforce Index adds a more targeted lens on skilled knowledge work, finding that 28% of U.S. skilled knowledge workers now freelance or work independently, generating an estimated $1.5 trillion in earnings in 2024. That matters because it shows high-skill freelance work as a deliberate, financially meaningful career model.
As the number and economic weight of independent workers increase, late-payment and receivables risks scale with them. Intuit QuickBooks’ 2025 Small Business Late Payments Report found that 56% of U.S. small businesses have outstanding unpaid invoices, with an average of about $17,500 owed per affected business and nearly half reporting invoices more than 30 days overdue. Aggregated findings from freelancer-focused invoice platforms suggest that the vast majority of freelancers have experienced late payments, and that late or non-payment collectively costs independent workers billions of dollars each year.
Additional resource: How late client payments to agencies cascade onto freelancers ↗
Why Freelancing Now Looks Like a Business Model
Freelancing in the U.S. is increasingly moving from informal side work into a structured, small‑business model. The search data shows people are actively looking for ways to start and run freelance businesses, while federal and survey data confirm a large and growing base of solo firms and independent professionals generating meaningful revenue across high-skill sectors. In practical terms, that means more vendors, more contracts, and more invoices, often from small, thinly staffed businesses that depend heavily on timely payment.
For companies that hire, partner with, or sell to freelancers, this shift changes receivables risk from an edge case to a core operating issue. A larger independent workforce, higher earnings, and persistent late‑payment patterns all point to a more fragmented receivables landscape, with more small balances spread across more counterparties and a higher likelihood that some accounts will fall behind or into dispute. Treating freelancers and solo agencies as formal business partners will become increasingly important as this structured freelance economy continues to grow.
Methodology
This study combines several data sources to show how freelancing is shifting from side work to structured business. First, Google Trends search-interest data was used to measure changes in U.S. search behavior around freelancing-related terms over a five-year window, including annual averages, rolling trends, and keyword peaks. Second, the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 Nonemployer Statistics were used to analyze the size of the solo-business economy nationally, by industry, and by state.
For the industry analysis, freelance-adjacent sectors were defined as NAICS 54 (Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services), NAICS 51 (Information), NAICS 61 (Educational Services), and NAICS 71 (Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation), selected because they capture a large share of professional, creative, educational, and information-based independent work. To place those structural findings within the wider labor market, the study incorporated additional context from official independent contractor benchmarks, including Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates and the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, as well as large-scale workforce surveys such as MBO Partners’ State of Independence in America and Upwork’s Future Workforce Index. Data on late payments and receivables risk for small and independent businesses was drawn from recent small-business payment research, including national surveys fielded by Intuit QuickBooks and freelancer-focused invoicing platforms.