oDesk: Online Work Market Will Grow To $1 Billion By 2012

Online work platform oDesk is reporting today that its contractors earned a record $22.3 million through the oDesk platform in October. This represents 90% growth from 2010. oDesk offers a “marketplace for talent” that makes it easy for companies to hire workers remotely.

Last month, contractors worked a record 2.1 million hours through the oDesk website (up from one million hours per month a year ago) while businesses posted an a record 109,718 jobs to the service. The company expects the overall market for online work to grow to an estimated $1 billion in 2012.

oDesk is also announcing a number of hired at the company. Jeff Jackson has joined as vice president of engineering and was previously senior vice president of engineering at Sun Microsystems. Jaleh Bisharat, a former marketing exec at OpenTable and Amazon, has been named vice president of marketing. And Bank Of America’s former CFO, Bob Frick, has joined the company’s board of directors.