HBR Blog: “The American workforce is now 34% freelancer, according to a new study commissioned by the Freelancers Union and the recently-merged Elance-oDesk. Well, sort of: 14.3 million of the 53 million freelancers counted in the survey are “moonlighters” (people with full-time jobs doing independent work in their spare time). Another 5.5 million are temp workers. Here’s the full breakdown…In any case, it’s a lot of people. But what’s hard to say is whether it’s more or less than there used to be. For the past few years, the main data source for those trying to quantify the freelance economy has been a 2006 Government Accountability Office report that put the number of “contingent workers” at 42.6 million, or 31% of the workforce. And yes, 53 million is more than 42.6 million and 34% is more than 31%, but the two surveys weren’t exactly counting the same people (moonlighters, for example, aren’t contingent workers). And back in 2006, the GAO estimated that “contingent workers constituted a relatively constant proportion of the total workforce from 1995 through 2005.”