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Study

Freelance job posts for writing and coding fell 21% after ChatGPT

Within eight months of ChatGPT's release, posts for writing and coding jobs fell 21% compared with jobs that need manual skills. Posts for image creation fell 17% after image-generating AI arrived.

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Last reviewed
Type of study
Data analysis
Published
2025
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At a glance

Source
Demirci, Hannane and Zhu (2025). Who Is AI Replacing? The Impact of Generative AI on Online Freelancing Platforms. Management Science, 71(10), 8097–8108. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2024.05420
How it was done
The authors compared the number of job posts for work AI can do, such as writing and coding, with posts for work that needs manual skills, before and after ChatGPT and image-generating AI were released. Data analysis. It builds a measure from existing data, such as job and task records.
Who took part
A large data set of job posts on one leading global freelancing platform.
Where
One global online freelancing platform. Freelancers are sole traders; many of the buyers are small firms.

“Our findings indicate a 21% decrease in the number of job posts for automation-prone jobs related to writing and coding compared with jobs requiring manual-intensive skills within eight months after the introduction of ChatGPT.”

What it found

  • Fewer posts. Posts for writing and coding jobs fell 21% within eight months of ChatGPT’s release, compared with posts for jobs that need manual skills.
  • Images too. Posts for image creation fell 17% after image-generating AI was released.
  • More competition. With fewer posts, more freelancers competed for each one.
  • The jobs left were harder. The writing and coding jobs still posted were more complex and paid more.
  • Awareness mattered. The authors used Google search trends to measure how well people knew that ChatGPT could do a type of work. Posts fell more for the types of work where that awareness was higher.

When the result holds

The study measures what buyers stopped paying freelancers to do. It is the supplier’s side of the time and money firms save with AI. A firm that sells writing, coding or images by the job is on that side.

A separate study of a freelance platform, with a different method, found demand for writing and translation 20–50% below trend after ChatGPT (Teutloff and colleagues, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025).

Limits

  • The data are job posts, not completed contracts or earnings.
  • It covers one platform.
  • The main result covers the first eight months after ChatGPT’s release.

Practices that use this study

This study supports: