UK businesses increased their spending on freelancers by 134%, according to new research figures.

Small businesses in Britain are increasingly outsourcing work to a global network of skilled but inexpensive consultants and freelancers in a bid to cut costs and keep trading, as banks miss their lending targets, according to new figures.

UK businesses increased their spending on freelancers by 134% in the year, making UK businesses the second largest employers of freelancers in the world.

Operating at a global level to survive

The news by Freelancer.co.uk. comes on the back of the five main banks missing their Project Merlin target for lending to smaller firms by more than a billion pounds and a 25% rise in the number of UK firms running into severe financial trouble in the final quarter of 2011 compared to the same time last year.

According to Saif Bonar, UK Manager of the outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace releasing the research, these figures show that small businesses are increasingly operating at a global level to survive.

"With a global workforce of more than three million highly skilled but affordable freelancers, it is little wonder that Britain’s small businesses have started outsourcing their work to secure and boost the bottom line. They are increasingly taking advantage of freelancers offering a range of skills to support their businesses. Without them bankruptcy rates in the UK could be much higher."

Further findings

The survey also found that small businesses increased demand for app development and mobile jobs by 226%, with Android jobs growing by more than 146%. Businesses also increased their use of data mining, rising 162% , while HTML5 jobs increased by a staggering 105% and will accelerate in 2012 as it replaces Adobe’s Flash as the powerhouse of online work.

Furthermore, there is a very strong demand for marketing services with Internet marketing up 110%, while jobs related to online marketing, such as link building, was up 89% and SEO up 72%.

Data entry jobs soared 36% as did data processing up 26% on the back of start-ups ramping up their market research and competitive analysis, creating an information services boom in the process.