The Big Freelancer Survey 2025

44% of freelancers in our sector earn less than minimum wage. Let that land.

The 2025 Big Freelancer Survey makes for tough reading. Cuts to funding are biting hard, but the real impact is being felt by those most precariously employed: freelancers. Fewer than half of us are working freelance by choice. Conditions are not improving – they are worsening.

I talk with freelancers all the time. Many feel isolated, out of the loop, and increasingly anxious in a context where competition for work is high and opportunities often opaque. That sense of precarity is real. But so too is the growing momentum around freelancers teaming up – on projects, on pitches, on mutual support. That’s not just a survival tactic. It’s a strategic shift.

I’ve been freelance most of my working life, and seeing all sorts of contingent conditions, I know what it means to freelance through uncertainty – and I know what a difference solidarity can make. This isn’t about saying we’re all in the same boat. We’re not. But we are part of the same weather system, and some are getting drenched.

Read the survey. Share it. Use it. We need contracting, funding, policy and commissioning decisions that are based on reality – and that reality is here, in black and white.

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