Elance Reveals August Hiring Trends: Graphic Design, Programming and Internet Marketing

Elance, where companies find, hire, manage and pay contractors online, today released its August edition of the ìElance Work Indexî, ranking the top 100 skills in todayís online labor market. Derived from data from more than 100,000 jobs posted on Elance in recent months, the Elance Work Index is a leading market indicator for online work tracking the hiring trends of the 60,000-plus companies that actively hire contractors on Elance to get work done.

This monthís Elance Work Index reinforces the insatiable need for IT and marketing expertise with graphic design, open source technologies, and online marketing skills topping the charts. Notable trends from this monthís Index include:

* Design of the Times. Graphic Design (#1) has regained the top spot in the Index trumping PHP (#2) which had held the pole position the past four consecutive months.

* Tech Still Trumps. Technology hiring trends continue to reaffirm the open-source movement with PHP (#2), MySQL (#3), and Joomla! (#8) firmly entrenched in the Top 10.

* Customers Are King. Demand for cost-effective customer acquisition is demonstrated by Internet Marketing (#7) moving up five spots and bolstered by the Top 25 placement of Search Engine Optimization (#21), Lead Generation (#22), and Sales (#23).

* Is Web 2.0 Dead? Probably not, but demand for Twitter (#71) expertise dropped 25 slots, with Facebook (#63) and Social Networking (#45) also falling this month.

* Find Your Voice. Companies care how they sound, with Telemarketing (up 22 to #55), Telephone Etiquette (up 6 to #86) and Voice Over (#97) entering the Top 100 for the first time.

* Gaga for Google. Lots of upward mobility in Google-land, with Google Website Optimizer (#31) making a huge 28 spot leap, and Google Analytics (#93) and Google AdSense (#68) both debuting in the Index for their first time.

The growth of online work is surging as companies discover and embrace a new way to get work done. Facing tighter budgets and growing workloads, more marketing and IT departments now find, hire, manage and pay contractors online as their alternative to traditional staffing. In July, companies posted more than 26,000 new jobs on Elance, building on the 270,000 jobs and $100m worth of online work posted on Elance in the last 12 months.