NATALIE WILLIAMS

As many anticipate the national budget each year to bring news of tightening our belts, it is important to review whether we the people have grown as an economy and how the current picture will affect us moving forward.

In recent years, it has become even more apparent to the layman how closely knit we are as a global economy – from the exponential spread of covid19 to the crippling effects of the shipment crisis to the unwarranted Russia-Ukraine war.

This realisation for many of us has spurred an awakening and attunement to our personal finances and how we can buffer the impact of these matters on our lives. We begin to question, "How can I secure my financial future? How can I ensure sudden changes in the economy will not significantly impact my income? What opportunities exist for me to be more cost-effective and benefit from savings and investments?"

Much of this is largely and more directly affected by the offerings in the local economy, depending significantly on the initiatives provided by the government to address these very issues on a much larger scale.

A young, vibrant digital startup, skillpik.com, is in fact developing opportunities that can greatly impact economic growth by encouraging individuals to capitalise on their skills and earn a main or supplemental income. Companies and individual service seekers have the opportunity to connect and collaborate with skilled people and entrepreneurs to complete work projects, outsource a variety services, or even hire personnel on a long-term or permanent basis.

As we aim to support this way of working and help improve local service sector revenue, we must examine the trends of the labour market globally to understand how this can, and will, affect us locally.

Here are some pertinent points to help every layman understand "what's in it for me":

Employment and unemployment

With a pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 4.5 per cent as of December 2019 and an increase to 7.2 per cent the following year, stimulus measures in the 2021/22 budget have helped reduce unemployment in 2022.

But unemployment has begun its incline again and is now at 5.10 per cent. This fluctuation shows the clear uncertainty for workers and the jobs they seek. Individuals are experiencing low job security, lack of control over work and have unstable incomes. For this reason, people must look at establishing multiple sources of income by maximising on their skills.

Unemployed individuals have an opportunity at skillpik to do just that. Freelancing gives individuals the opportunity to work from anywhere and at any time. With the government paying greater attention to developing a skills market, organisations both locally and abroad can outsource business processes via our platform.

The economy can benefit largely through this revenue stream, especially since digitised services are easily exportable. Skillpik can therefore have a significant impact on the value of our local service exports, which stood just below US$500 million in 2020.

Flexible work