A business manager is an Upwork agency role that lets a member submit proposals, negotiate and sign contracts and manage work on the agency's behalf without owning the agency or controlling its money.
Upwork agencies run on roles. The owner has everything; an admin manages the agency's settings and roster; a plain member does the work. The business manager sits between them on the commercial side. Upwork's Help Center describes the role as one that can find jobs, send proposals in the agency's name, assign a member to each contract, handle offers and contract changes and message clients, which is the day-to-day work of winning and running engagements. What it does not include is the financial account: withdrawals and the agency's payment settings stay with the owner.
The role exists because an agency owner who is also its best developer cannot spend the day bidding. A business manager, often a sales or operations person who never bills an hour, keeps the proposal pipeline moving, and the Connects spent are drawn from the agency's balance rather than that person's own. On the client's side the proposal shows the agency and the member proposed for the work, and the client may never see who sent it.
It is often confused with the admin role. Admins manage the agency; business managers manage its business with clients. One person can hold both, and in a small agency usually does.
How Upwork Insights uses it
This term describes Upwork's own rules or product rather than a figure the index measures; the pages that do carry live figures are the stats and rate pages.