Online job trends: fewer AdSense jobs, Android jobs rocket upward

January 9th, 2012

After a slow Q3, Android jobs rocketed up 33% (to 2,454) in Q4.

Freelancer.com, an online outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace, has identified the 50 fastest growing online job categories for the last quarter of 2011.

CEO, Matt Barrie, said, “As the largest outsourcing marketplace in the world with over 3 million freelancers and 1.3 million jobs posted to date, the Freelancer.com Fast 50 provides unparalleled and timely insights into online job trends, success and failure in the product marketplace and market share in application support for a range of companies, technologies and products.”

The number of jobs being posted is up, which is more good news for a struggling economy that may finally be inching out of the doldrums: 134,820 jobs were posted in the fourth quarter, up from 114,000 jobs in Q3.

“Overall, online projects were up over 18% for the quarter. The sophistication and nature of jobs continues to amaze us as we see jobs outsourced in areas as diverse as Astrophysics, Genetic Engineering and Industrial Design,” Barrie added.

TOP TRENDS FOR Q4 2011

●AdSense jobs pull back after surging in Q3: Google’s Panda Update decimated content writing jobs in Q2 2011, before recovering strongly in Q3 2011. These jobs have pulled back in Q4 2011 with Google AdSense jobs plummeting 21% (from 1,051 to 826), scoring the biggest fall of all jobs for the quarter.

Google AdSense topped the leader board for risers in Q3 2011, having risen 76%. Other big risers from last quarter were flat or fell; Ghostwriting jobs down 21% to 3,382, Reviews up 9% to 2,251, Travel Writing down 47%.

●Android takes off again in Q4. After a slow Q3, Android jobs rocketed up 33% (to 2,454) in Q4. Apple iPhone jobs grew 18% (to 3,682). By the end of 2012, Android should be close to overtaking the iPhone for the rate of development of new applications.

Apple iPad jobs rose 22% (to 1692). Blackberry jobs were flat, up 2%, but with volumes too low to register on the Fast 50. As reported before, Symbian and Windows phone applications do not even move the dial. Nokia was down 19% to insignificant numbers. Amazon Kindle was up 27% but again on insignificant volumes.

●Data Entry jobs exploded in Q4 up 54% (from 10,146 to 15,651 jobs) topping the leader board as the technology industry and information services boom. We saw tremendous growth in these jobs as entrepreneurial startups hired freelance teams to conduct market research, competitive analysis and build a huge variety of information services. Similarly Microsoft Excel jobs were up 51% (to 7,056), Data Processing up 39% (to 6,705).

●Programming jobs likewise exploded in Q4 2011 as the tech industry soared. Q4 2011 saw a strong increase in applications developed in C++ (up 38% to 2,214), Java (up 36% to 2,513), C (up 27% to 1,953), .NET (up 27% to 346) and C# (up 20% to 2,124), although PHP still dominates the web (up 13% to 28,872).

●HTML5 continues to grow strongly, up 41% (to 1,585), trouncing Flash (up 6% to 2,955). As predicted last Fast 50, HTML5 will overtake Flash by mid-2012.

●Cloud Computing Jobs are still way too low to register on the Fast 50, but it is interesting to note that Amazon Web Services Jobs were up 24% (to 314), Google App Engine is experiencing lacklustre interest (down 19% to 151), and no-one at all is interested in Microsoft Azure (down 32% to a paltry 13 jobs).

●Other Winners & Losers: Facebook (up 29% to 7,947) and Social Networking (up 26% to 5,276) jobs continued to fly. Google+ jobs appeared for the first time, but were too low to register on the Fast 50 as yet (0 to 279). MySpace fell 35% and off the edge of the Earth.

Online job trends: fewer AdSense jobs, Android jobs rocket upward

Related Stories:

Leave a Reply