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View All NewsUS tax knowledge, skills fastest-growing on Upwork in Q1
On the heels of the tax reform bill passed in 2017, US taxation topped online staffing provider Upwork’s first-quarter list of the 20 fastest-growing skills. The first tax filing season affected by the new tax law also spurred demand for financial planning specialists and certified public accountants, which ranked No. 6 and No. 16 respectively.
The Upwork Skills Index calculates year-over-year growth rates based on freelancer billings through Upwork in the quarter versus the same quarter in the prior year.
Hadoop — an open source software used to store, process and analyze big data applications — was the second fastest-growing skill out of more than 5,000 skills freelancers provide on Upwork. And robotic process automation, in the third spot, earned a spot on the index for the first time.
Skills categories on the list in the first quarter all experienced more than 170% year-over-year growth; the top 10 grew more than 370%.
“Labor markets overall are tightening, and for many skills, employers are increasingly struggling to find available workers in their local areas,” said Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel. “As a result, the array of skills employers are finding through digital platforms is growing, including technical skills like Hadoop and Kubernetes as well as non-technical skills such as taxation and urban planning.”
The top 20 fastest-growing skills:
- US Taxation
- Hadoop
- Robotic process automation
- Explainer videos
- Computer-aided manufacturing
- Financial planning
- Urban design
- Software documentation
- Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Geospatial
- Julia development
- Kubernetes
- Magento
- Employee training
- Shopify templates
- Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
- Vue.js framework
- Leadership development
- Architectural rendering
- Podcasting