People Per Hour

PeoplePerHour is a UK based company that provides a website for the advertisement of freelance work.

Founded in 2007 by Xenios Thrasyvoulou and Simos Kitiris  the company has offices in Landon and New York. Its network consists of about 250,000 active users, of whom 180,000 are freelancers and 70,000 who are clients. The majority of clients using the services are small companies that do not want to hire a full-time professional resources.

This type of online marketplace is also referred to as crowdsourcing  using a virtual network to outsource work.

There is some debate as to whether the emergence of this type of freelance marketplace is part of a longer-term structural change in the way that companies across the world manage their human resources. Figures from the UK Office for National Statistics  show that 358,000 more people aged 65 or over are currently working than was the case a decade ago. Usage statistics from PeoplePerHour indicate that the number of retirees looking for work using the website has increased by 137 per cent during 2012.

In August 2012, PeoplePerHour was named by the science and technology magazine, Wired UK as one of "Europe's 100 Hottest Startups of 2012”