It wasn’t that long ago that if you were a freelancer, you felt bad about what you did—like you were somehow less than your peers. It was something that you did as a default move—you went through a life change, or you were trying to break into an industry that wouldn’t have you. That may never have been true; these days, it’s just dead wrong.

Freelancers are assembling their work lives in different ways than they have before, and for different reasons. Yet as a society, we still have a profound misunderstanding of who these independent workers are and what they do.

The Freelancers Union has partnered with Upwork (formerly Elance-oDesk) to commission our second annual independent study of the freelance workforce. The results are fascinating.

Freelancers are a growing workforce. There are now almost 54 million Americans freelancing, an increase of 700,000 over last year. That’s more than a third of the American workforce. Millennials, as I’ve argued before, are native freelancers, and it shows: They are freelancing at a higher rate than any other group.

Independent workers are freelancing by choice. Survey respondents told us that they’re freelancing because of the flexibility, freedom, and balance that it offers. In our survey, 60% of respondents said they started freelancing more by choice than by necessity, compared to last year’s figure of 53%.

Critically, half of freelancers we talked to said that they wouldn’t take a traditional job, no matter how much it paid. And because being a freelancer lets you work from anywhere, a third of freelancers say they have been able to move because of the flexibility their career provides.

Freelancing Pays. Maybe most significantly, we found that full-time freelancers say they actually earn more than the average American worker, and a majority say they’re earning more money than when they had a traditional job. And nearly half predict that their incomes will go up in the coming year, with many directly attributing that to an increase in demand for their services.