Online Writers Take a Hit in Q1 Jobs Report

Freelancer.com has released the Freelancer Fast 50, which is the company's findings on the fastest-growing online outsourcing jobs of the first quarter of 2011. The Freelancer.com Fast 50 charts the top 50 rising job categories in the online labor market quarter by quarter, providing a rolling, up-to-the-minute account of online freelance job trends.

The top three trends for the quarter included the following:

- Panda Pounds Writers: The most noticeable digital labor shift this quarter was not seen in what went up, but what went down. Freelancer.com has cited a massive decline in content writing jobs all across the board in the wake of Google adjusting its search algorithm. Article Submission jobs are down 29 percent, copywriting is down 19 percent and ghostwriting is down by 12 percent.

- Hardware Design Booming: Every category related to hardware product design is up significantly. Product design jobs are up 23 percent, Solidworks is up 25 percent, microcontroller jobs are up 21 percent and mechanical engineering is up 18 percent.

- Winners & Losers: Jobs related to Apple products continue to rise, with iPhone-related jobs gaining 12 percent, iPad jobs up 18 percent and Cocoa jobs up 41 percent. Android jobs are up 15 percent but jobs related to Microsoft products continued their seemingly terminal descent - MS Access down 15 percent; MS Expression down 28 percent; Windows Mobile down 9 percent; Microsoft general down 16 percent; Windows CE down 20 percent; Windows desktop down 23 percent and Windows Server down 27 percent. Nokia's Symbian jobs also plummeted 32 percent.