Since late August, the news has faithfully (and perhaps sadistically) reported the economic beating the world is taking. With each passing day, new stories emerge about layoffs, company closures, bailouts, and controversial bonuses. Stock portfolios have evaporated into thin air.

I’ve seen large businesses near the brink of crumbling and hold emergency meetings in which stakeholders make (sometimes knee-jerk) decisions to save the company.

But what about freelancers? How are they faring in these tumultuous times?

It may come as a surprise but I’ve found that most freelancers are as busy or busier than ever! In fact, when I was talking about this with one colleague who works with freelancers, she declared: “What recession??? You’d never know there was recession by looking at how busy my freelance clients are.”

There are a few reasons for this, I suspect.

Shareholders are one big factor that can force a company to make sweeping decisions. And there has been such an emphasis on shareholder value and stock price that these two “measurements” are forcing big companies to do drastic things to keep everyone happy. Freelancers, though, have a shareholder of one – themselves – so their decisions are often more likely focused on the basics (getting clients, delivering quality service, paying the bills) that they end up performing in a superior way by maintaining their “business as usual” approach.

Freelancers are lean while big business can be fat. I’m a freelancer and I look around at my “office”. It’s a comfortable room in my house. I don’t have a lot of overhead expenses to rent a corporate property and fill it with equipment and staff it employees. That’s expensive! And it’s a fixed (relentless) cost. Freelancers keep their costs low, and that keeps their bottom line healthier in these troubling times.

Value is a third important factor. Many businesses provide value but freelancers can give a level of personal service that larger companies cannot. And because freelancers are lean, their prices may be equal to or lower than the big business price. So customers who still need to buy products or services will find much higher value by doing business with a freelancer.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I think these are the main reasons. There are certainly other factors, too:

• A freelancer’s sense of ownership over his or her company gives greater impetus to succeed, compared to the highly diluted sense of ownership that only a handful of dedicated employees feel at any company.
• The web has transformed opportunities for freelancers to attract business and position themselves in ways that we never saw before. This helps to make freelancers a viable option for international customers.
• Market fragmentation (and economic turmoil) means that smaller companies are doing more business. And small companies buy from other small companies (including freelancers). There are fewer big companies out there.

So, the economic turmoil is impacting freelancers, but I believe it is impacting them positively. Not every freelancer will be driving around in a gold-plated Rolls Royce because of this recession, but we should see most freelancers stay afloat through the economic storm.