Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Flexible Workspace Outlook Report. According to the report's introduction, its purpose is "to help office occupiers and investors alike to better understand: • The rationale behind using flexible workspace • Examples of leasing models • Types of experience models • The volume and characteristics of flexible workspace in leading U.S.

2018 187

2018 2019 2016 Travel 187

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 14, 2020

The Johns Hopkins Non-Profit Economic Data Project recently released its 2019 Non-Profit Employment Report.    As the report chart below shows, from 2007 to 2016 (the most recently available data) employment in the non-profit sector grew nearly four times faster than the for-profit sector. 

2019 162

2019 2016 2017 2007 162

Small Business Labs

APRIL 9, 2019

.    The reasons those with full-time jobs say they are interested in gig work are increased schedule flexibility, the ability to work where they want and the ability to take on multiple, different projects. Most, according to the report, do this out of financial necessity.

2019 258

2019 258

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 31, 2017

Ardent Partners recently released their 2017-2018 State of the Contingent Workforce Management report. The report is targeted at procurement and HR professionals who manage contingent workforce programs at larger organizations. This Ardent Partners is an analyst firm focused on corporate procurement and supply chains.

Skills 160

Skills 2018 2017 International 160

Small Business Labs

JULY 11, 2017

The online platforms like Upwork, Uber, Lyft and WorkMarket are not just used to provide hourly or project work. 71 percent of survey respondents reported they had always wanted to be their own boss, while 53 percent said they did not like having to answer to a boss, and half vowed not to return to relying solely on a traditional job.

Kelly Services 155

Kelly Services 155

Small Business Labs

MARCH 12, 2018

Exploring the rise of self-employment in the modern economy is a new report on self-employment in the UK. It comes from IPSE (the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self Employed), who worked with Kingston University on this project. The We will report our new finding in a few months.

Skills 150

Skills 2018 2008 150

Small Business Labs

JULY 6, 2017

The study chart below shows how much faster the sharing economy is projected to grow relative to traditional rental industry segments.    Online staffing, which Mastercard is projecting to grow at 37% compound annual rate, caught our attention for two reasons. That's a lot of projected growth.

2025 113

2025 2015 2020 AT&T 113

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 28, 2019

  Because of their (intentionally) skewed sample, we can't precisely project how many people these percentages equate to. The report also identifies 4 tribes of new freelancers. As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), most gig work is done to generate supplemental income.  But for the U.S.

Skills 229

Skills 229

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 24, 2017

The Georgetown Center on Education the Workforce has started a project on "good jobs" , with a focus on good jobs that don't require a university degree.    According to their first report, there are 30 million American workers without a college degree who have a good job.

2015 150

2015 AT&T 150

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 7, 2017

"  They report that in India and China almost 2/3rds of all smartphones are big. The net result, as the Recode chart below shows, is tablet sales have slowed and are projected to decline about 1% per year over the next 5 years. As we reported last year, it's a mobile world and will continue to become even more so.

2014 124

2014 2017 Phones UPS 124

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 6, 2015

More than half (51%) of freelancers had obtained a project online at some point in their freelance career. While they don't explicitly state how many of their respondents report having multiple sources of income, two of their freelancer categories - moonlighters and diversified workers - clearly have multiple income sources.

2015 100

2015 AT&T 100

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 30, 2019

Pew internet's Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life project asked hundreds of technology experts how people's lives might be impacted by the evolution of the internet over the next 50 years. The report is long, but the first page provides an excellent summary. It's up to us to decide which.

Policies 100

Policies UPS 100

Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

Ardent Partners recently released their 2016-2017 State of Contingent Workforce Management report.    According to the report, the use of contingent workers by corporations continues to grow and accounts for nearly 38 percent of all workers in 2016.

2016 100

2016 2020 2017 2015 100

Small Business Labs

MAY 17, 2017

Key quote: "Three-quarters of law firms with more than 250 lawyers use contract attorneys, says a 2016 report from legal consultancy Altman Weil."   And if you want to hire data scientists on a project basis, Experfy  is the place to go. " The article chart below also illustrates this growth.

Skills 160

Skills Legal 2016 2017 160

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

We’re just starting a project that includes more research on VanLifers and digital nomads. We’ll report our finding in the coming months. The reason is these people are mobile workers on steroids and they provide insights on the future of mobile and distributed work.

Social Media 164

Social Media Lifestyle Twitter 164

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 23, 2014

The GigaOm Research report The modern workforce part 3: a changing culture of work  (paid subscription required) covers the shift to what they call the "3D Workforce" They describe this as a decentralized, discontinuous and distributed workforce.  Half of all employees interact with temps at least occasionally. . 

Temping 100

Temping 100

Small Business Labs

MAY 12, 2015

Learning related: 69% reported they learned new skills. 68% reported they improved their existing skill set. 67% reported they attend events at their coworking space occasionally (45%) or often (21%); only 4% said they never attend events. 78% reported that coworking helps keep them sane.

Networking 100

Networking Skills Learning 100

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 27, 2015

Ardent Partners has released its State of Contingent Workforce Management 2015-2016 report. They report that nearly 35% of today's total workforce is comprised of non-employee workers. They're also projecting this share to increase. The I got my copy at Guidant's website.

Temping 100

Temping 2016 2015 Environment 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 8, 2013

The BLS recently released their Industry Employment and Output Projections to 2020. One of the more interesting projections is the share of the labor force that is self-employed:  it's projected to fall to 5.9 referenced in the report.  percent in 2020 from 6.3%

2020 100

2020 2010 2009 Health 100

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 19, 2015

  We first got interested in guilds way back in 2007 when we were doing research for the Intuit 2020 New Artisan Economy report. Key quote from the 2015 MBO Partners State of Independence report: In 2015 36% of independent workers reported spending about $101 billion in the past year hiring other independent workers on a contract basis.

2015 100

2015 2007 2020 Forms 100

Small Business Labs

JUNE 28, 2013

Job Growth and Education Requirements is a comprehensive new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce that projects job growth by industry and occupation to 2020. The report covers a lot of ground, including detailed job forecasts by state.

Skills 100

Skills 2020 Stress Forms 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 29, 2014

The data comes from the Freelancers Union study How to Live the Freelance Life , a research project we partnered with the Freelancers Union on.   As the article's title states, 87% of the surveyed freelancers reported having more than one source of income.

Lifestyle 100

Lifestyle Interviewing Goals UPS 100

Small Business Labs

MAY 2, 2017

Financial Diaries study to be one of the most important economic research projects of the last decade. That amount of effort, by the way, is why diary projects are rarely done.   See the Intuit On-Demand Workforce study report for more on this topic. We consider the U.S. They are very expensive and very hard to do. 

2014 124

2014 2013 2012 Expenses 124

Small Business Labs

JULY 8, 2013

take a look at the Hamilton Project's recent study on the lack of low income students attending elite U.S.   The chart below, from the report, pretty nicely sums this issue up. If you want to be depressed about the state of education and opportunity equality in the U.S.,

AT&T 100

AT&T UPS 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 9, 2017

 Workers in these spaces consistently report making more connections, learning skills faster, and feeling more inspired and in control than their cubicle-dwelling counterparts inside large companies. The second, more powerful trend is the steadily climbing number of freelance, independent, contingent, and temporary workers .

Cubicle 100

Cubicle 2014 Networking Skills 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 27, 2015

But a couple of interesting statistics from the 2014 MBO Partners State of Independence study show how widespread the digital nomad movement could become: 22% of all independent workers surveyed reported less than 10% of their revenue came from their local area. 14% reported that none of their revenue came from their local area.

2014 100

2014 Social Media Lifestyle Travel 100

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

We posted last fall on the preliminary results of a study on non-profit employment from Johns Hopkins Non-Profit Economic Data project. The final report is available  and has greater detail on non-profit employment over the last decade.  The chart below - from the report - shows how big the sector is. .

2010 100

2010 100

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

The session was part of a broader research project we're conducting with Intuit updating the Future of the Accounting Profession study that was released in early 2011. Our 2011 forecast report covered outsourcing, but positioned it mostly as a threat to the accounting industry. We found this both interesting and important.

2011 100

2011 Skills Learning UPS 100

Small Business Labs

APRIL 4, 2017

As we pointed out in the 2008 Intuit report The New Artisan Economy : … by the beginning of the 21 st century, ownership of large-scale infrastructures no longer determined business success in a growing number of industries. Coworking turned a fixed cost (long term lease) into a variable cost (month to month membership). 

Restaurants 178

Restaurants 2007 2008 Customer Service 178

Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 10, 2012

Shareable i s an online magazine reporting on the sharing economy. They cover the people and projects bringing a shareable world to life. And the companies making it happen. They also share how-tos so you can make sharing real in your life.    They are in fund raising mode  and need our support.  

100

100

Small Business Labs

APRIL 15, 2014

 This definition includes internal employees, vendors, consultants, alliance partners as well as contingent workers who work for the organization on a project basis.  What we are saying is despite what is often reported in the press, issues other than cost are often more important.

Skills 100

Skills International UPS 100

Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 15, 2015

And as we've reported in the past, access to specialized talent and increasing business flexibility and agility are key reasons for the growing use of external talent. Externals seem to be reading from a script rather than trying to understand our unique problems. Definitely see the article for details.

International 100

International Skills Management 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 25, 2016

  But as our 2010 research project showed, high growth entrepreneurs are very different motivationally than traditional small business owners.   Most do want to grow - 76% of those surveyed and 71% of those interviewed reported having a growth goal - and almost all (over 90%) have explicit financial targets. 

2007 100

2007 2008 2015 Interviewing 100

Small Business Labs

MARCH 21, 2016

In 2014 we reported on a Pew study showing only 44% of Americans consider themselves middle class, down from 53% in 2008. Run by the NORC project at the University of Chicago, it's been conducted every two years since 1972. in 2002 to 34.8% So it's not just millennials. Back to economic uncertainty.

2002 100

2002 2014 2008 Expenses 100

Small Business Labs

JUNE 16, 2014

Sometimes — when projects go wrong or bad things happen: 55.74%. report feeling more secure being self-employed than if they had a traditional job. Smartbriefs recently did a non-scientific poll asking readers how frequently they worry about getting fired. Often — I am frequently on edge: 17.49%.

100

100

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

  This work is summarized in the just released Intuit 2020 Report - The Future of the Accounting Profession.    It may be hard to believe, but this is one of the most interesting research and forecasting projects we've worked on.    The reason?

Social Media 100

Social Media Collaborate 2020 Interviewing 100

Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 22, 2014

  I won't attempt to synthesize their 110 page report, but below are a few trends that jumped out at me. Key quote: Many companies are setting up long-view projects to analyze how macro shifts in the economy and consumer trends will affect them. Or, look at the Slideshare below. JWT: The Future 100 from JWTIntelligence.

2015 100

2015 Clothes AT&T UPS 100