Behnam Amin-Azad, CEO of the Karlancer platform, told Digiato about a 96% drop in project volume during the initial days of the blackout, expressing his belief that even with the return of the internet, rebuilding lost trust will take months.
Unemployment During Peak Season
Karlancer, as a freelancing platform, serves as a hub for hiring professional freelancers and outsourcing diverse projects, including programming, web design, content creation, SEO, translation, digital marketing, and graphic design. Iran’s freelancing market, which had experienced growth in recent years, is now grappling with numerous challenges due to the internet shutdown.
Amin-Azad describes the situation in the first days of the communication blackout as catastrophic, citing statistics recorded on the platform. According to him, in the initial days of the nationwide outage, the number of registered projects and activities on the platform faced a decline of 95% to 96%.
The CEO of Karlancer explains that although some activities have resumed with the passage of time and the establishment of limited access, the current situation is far from normal. He states:
“Yesterday and today, activity volume has returned to only 20% to 30% of last month’s average. This is despite the fact that the current period—the months leading up to the end of the year—is generally considered the peak work season for freelancers and the time for executing advertising campaigns and corporate projects.”
Total Standstill in Specific Job Categories
The comments from Karlancer’s CEO reveal that not all sectors have been damaged equally; activity in some sectors has reached zero. Amin-Azad clarifies that projects related to Instagram—such as admin duties, post design, stories, and Reels creation—have practically ceased. With access to this social network blocked, businesses operating on Instagram have halted all orders.
The scope of this crisis has extended to areas like content creation and SEO. Employers, observing users’ lack of access to search engines and the drop in Google traffic, consider efforts to optimize sites and produce content in the current conditions to be futile. Consequently, many long-term contracts in these sectors have been terminated or suspended.
Amin-Azad notes that requests have sharply decreased even in the technical and programming sectors. Significantly, programmers themselves are unable to work in these conditions. He continues:
“Aside from the clients, users (freelancers) are also canceling projects because they tell us they performed these tasks using AI tools and search engines, and they lack the ability to work when these tools are inaccessible.”
The Dead End for Foreign Projects
One of the advantages of freelancing in Iran was the possibility of earning foreign currency and collaborating with foreign clients—an advantage that has now turned into an Achilles’ heel. The CEO of Karlancer points to the presence of employers from neighboring countries like Turkey and Afghanistan on the platform, noting the complete severance of communication between the domestic workforce and foreign clients.
For example, Amin-Azad cites projects such as website design worth amounts like 300 million Tomans, where the client was abroad and the freelancer was inside Iran. With the internet cut, the possibility of communication and coordination between the parties vanished.
The Ambiguous Future of Freelancing in Iran
Responding to how the internet blackout might impact the future careers of freelancers, the CEO of Karlancer explains that even after this outage period passes, individuals cannot survive a year with multiple periods of internet blackouts and unemployment. He believes that some freelancers may distance themselves from this working model and prefer to choose jobs that offer guaranteed job security.
