Creative freelancers — with little job protection and incomes reliant on people leaving their homes — have been some of the hardest hit in the coronavirus-driven recession, according to economists, the Wall Street Journal reported. Performers, production crews, ride-share drivers and personal trainers were among the first to lose work and will likely be among the last to regain lost ground in the coming months, experts say. “These freelancers, they suffer more because they can’t rely on the big corporation to protect (them),” said William Yu, an economist at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. That is particularly bad news for Los Angeles, which has the country’s second-highest concentration of high-skilled creative freelancers after Nashville, according to an analysis from Fiverr International Ltd., which runs a website connecting freelancers and employers. L.A. had the sixth highest unemployment rate among major metropolitan areas in April, according to the most recent update from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. State figures for May put Los Angeles-area unemployment at nearly 21 percent. Some freelancers in L.A. say that they are thinking of leaving entirely, raising questions about the future of a city long full of creative workers who pay the bills with second, third, and fourth jobs. Nashville and New York, the other cities with highest concentrations of creative freelancers, are also outpacing national unemployment.
