Trends and Requirements

This is Part 1 of our 2025 Upwork Market Series. This article focuses on trends and freelancer requirements: category and specialty shifts, entry-level accessibility, language requirements, and the skills clients mention most often.

If you want the full context and navigation for the whole series, start from the 2025 report overview.

Key Insights

• Eleven out of twelve categories saw year-over-year declines in project volume. Overall the market is down by 9%.
• A share of entry level projects is less than 9%, down from 15% in 2024. Admin Support, Translation and Customer Service are more welcoming for beginners.
• Video-related skills are now more in-demand than Illustration in the Design category.

11 out of 12 Categories Shrink, Writing Hit the Hardest

In 2025, the Upwork freelance market took a noticeable downturn. Eleven out of twelve categories saw year-over-year declines in project volume — a stark contrast to last year's modest growth.

Writing projects dropped the most at 32%, continuing their sharp decline from last year. IT & Networking and Data Science also saw significant pullbacks with -27% and -14% respectively.

The ever-dominant Web & Mobile Development category shrank by 13%, conceding the first place to Design & Creative. However, AI Apps & Integration speciality has shown x2 growth in 2025 (yet it is quite niche compared to other specializations). Ecommerce development is also resisting the decline.

Admin Support and Translation continue their quiet fade, down 4% and 20% respectively. In Admin Support, Virtual Assistance held relatively stable, but Data Entry and Transcription projects continued their long decline — the most automation-prone tasks are clearly being phased out. Legal, which had shown some signs of recovery last year, declined another 14%, suggesting instability in demand for freelance legal services.

In a year full of red numbers, Design & Creative is the rare exception: +0.5% YoY growth. But there are some shifts underneath this stability. Video & Animation sub-category up 11% year over year and surpassed the all time leader Graphic Design. With 17% YoY growth Branding & Logo Design became a real standout, overtaking several other subfields in Q3 and ending the year strong. This could signal growing demand for identity work, even as generic design tasks stagnate.

Only 4% of IT & Networking Jobs Want Beginners

In 2025, entry-level opportunities on Upwork remain limited, on average less than 9% projects are open to beginners. This year's number is even lower than in 2024, when it accounted for almost 15%.

Admin Support, Translation and Customer Service categories have the highest share of entry-level projects, with around 20% of jobs falling into this bucket. These three categories remain the top picks for newcomers looking to build experience and ratings.

By contrast, IT & Networking is the toughest field to break into, with just 4% of projects marked as entry-level, and nearly 47% requiring expert-level experience (with an average expert-level requirement at 28%). This category includes some heavy tech jobs like database management and Information Security. Legal and Data Science & Analytics also skew senior, with over a third of all jobs in those categories marked "expert."

Most Upwork clients don't set language requirements: almost 90% of projects across all categories have no stated English level at all. Writing leads with the highest share of native or bilingual requirements (5.5%), followed by Customer Service (4.3%). The latter is the one that most often has the requirements stated. Sales and Marketing as well as Admin Support also have a larger share of Fluent requirements. Most likely, good command of English is expected as a given in client-facing or content-heavy roles.

Skill Analysis Hints Developers Learn Design and Designers — Video Editing

We've also analyzed the most frequently mentioned skills for each category. Although it's quite common to double the Category or specialization in the Skill section, we still managed to find some useful insights.

• Video-related skills are exploding in Design — Video Editing (24%) and Video Production (17%) are among the top 5 most requested skills and now more in-demand than Illustration
• Graphic Design shows up in 11% of Dev jobs, suggesting rising demand for hybrid developer-designer (or should we call them 'devsigners'?
• "English" is a top-3 skill in both Writing (27%) and Translation (43%), reinforcing that language proficiency is a differentiator — even when not formally required.
• In Data Science & Analytics, 14% of projects still request Data Entry. This suggests that while AI is rising, there's still demand for manual data work — or perhaps clients don't always differentiate.

The freelance market got tougher in 2025. With fewer projects posted, competition is up — so standing out matters more than ever. Strong proposals with clear, relevant examples make a big difference. At the same time, generalist roles in writing, translation, and admin support are fading. It's smarter now to either go deep in a niche or branch into areas with steady demand, like UX design or data visualization. AI is also shifting the landscape. If your tasks are easy to automate, it's time to either adapt your services or start using AI tools to stay efficient. And finally, don't just chase volume — follow the money. Growth may be slowing, but budgets in certain specializations are rising. We'll explore those in the next part of this series.