New Study Tracks How Businesses Quietly Replaced Freelancers With AI Tools

A recent study by Ramp's economics lab reveals businesses are increasingly substituting AI tools for freelance workers. This shift, tracked from Q3 2021 to Q3 2025 across thousands of companies, focuses on spending data. Online labor marketplace spending decreased significantly, from 0.66% to 0.14% of total business spend, during this period. Simultaneously, spending on AI model providers surged from zero to 2.85%. Over half of businesses using freelance marketplaces in early 2022 had ceased using them by mid-2025. The cost efficiency is striking; firms reduced freelance spending by roughly a dollar for every few cents spent on AI tools. This substitution rate varies depending on the businesses' initial reliance on freelancers. The study employed a difference-in-differences approach, using ChatGPT's launch as a natural experiment. While micro-level changes were observed, the study does not predict widespread job losses. Increased demand for AI system developers and maintainers could offset displacement in freelance roles.