Freelancer.com, the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace by number of users and jobs posted, today unveiled results from a global survey measuring attitudes towards work.
The global survey, with 2,380 respondents across different world regions, generations and industries, crowns Data Entry as the world’s most boring job, while Design takes out the top spot for the World’s Most Fun Job.
The World’s Most Boring Job
More than one third (39%) of respondents admit that Data Entry is the most boring task they perform in their day-to-day at work. These jobs typically include reporting, lead gen research, CRM and database updating tasks. Coming in equal second are Writing and Customer Service tasks (22%), where one in five respondents revealed these are the most boring jobs for them.
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Data Entry
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Writing
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Customer Service
The leading cause of boredom amongst most workers are tasks that are too repetitive (38%), with almost two in five respondents claiming this as the main contributor. Too many small tasks (30%) and too much admin work (27%) were also recognized as contributors to boredom while working.
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Tasks are too repetitive
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Too many small tasks
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Too much administrative work
“Our global survey offers valuable insights for businesses looking to improve their work environments and increase productivity. By delegating monotonous tasks like data entry to on-demand freelancers, companies can free up their in-house employees to focus on more engaging work that they enjoy doing. By eliminating the burden of repetitive tasks and administrative work, workplaces can create a more dynamic and enjoyable workplace for everyone involved,” said Marko Zitko, Communications Manager at Freelancer.com.
The World’s Most Fun Job
Whether it’s editing an image on Photoshop or an office party invite on Canva, there’s now no doubt design tasks are the most fun and exciting task people around the world do at work. According to the survey, almost half of respondents (49%) rank design tasks as their number one task. This is followed by Writing tasks (40%) and IT related tasks (31%).
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Design
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Writing
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IT
By Age & Generations
Across the board, Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X all share similar job preferences – they hate data entry jobs, love design and writing jobs, and become bored at work when tasks become too repetitive. The only difference across these three generations being that Gen Z ranks data entry as their third preference, while Millennials enjoy IT tasks and Gen X find customer service tasks as a fun and exciting part of their day.
The most different age group are Baby Boomers who find IT, Design and Marketing tasks as their most boring, while ranking Writing tasks as their most fun job. Baby boomers also believe that boredom is caused by too much administrative work.
By Region
Data Entry is the most boring job across all regions – North America, Latin America (LATAM), Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) – but it’s not the case for the other boring jobs.
Respondents from North America, EMEA and LATAM all rank Finance as their second most boring job, but respondents from APAC award Writing as the second most boring job. Coming in third for both LATAM and APAC are Customer Service tasks, while North America find IT jobs boring and EMEA find Writing tasks more boring.
Design and Writing tasks are uniformly the most fun jobs worldwide, with all regions reporting this as their most fun and exciting tasks. All regions, however, rank different jobs in their third spot, with North America picking Marketing, EMEA selecting IT, LATAM deciding on Customer Service, and APAC selecting Data Entry.
Repetitive work remains as the leading cause of boredom across all regions.
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Methodology: The World’s Most Boring Job surveyed 2,380 freelancers and employers over the age of 18 on Freelancer.com between December 2022 to February 2023 across 103 countries. Of the respondents, 62% were from the Asia-Pacific region, 20% from the North America region, 16% from the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, and 2% from Latin America. Specific countries include: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil and Egypt.
About Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com is the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace by total number of users and projects posted. More than 64 million registered users have posted over 22.3 million projects and contests to date in over 2,000 areas as diverse as website development, logo design, marketing, copywriting, aerospace engineering and manufacturing. Freelancer also owns Escrow.com and Freightlancer & Loadshift. Freelancer Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker ASX:FLN and is quoted on OTCQX Best Market under the ticker FLNCF.
For more information, contact:
Press Inquiries: press@freelancer.com
Marko Zitko
Communications Manager
+1 (650) 800-6863
+61 404 574 830
marko@freelancer.com
