Recent Release | 16 May 2023

The State of the Creator Economy – Assessing the Economic, Cultural, and Educational Impact of YouTube in the US in 2022

Economic Consulting Team

Oxford Economics

This study presents an updated assessment of YouTube’s contribution to US GDP and employment, and its broader impact on society and culture.

YouTube enables American content creators to reach a large domestic and international audience. This supports substantial economic value for creators who receive income from the platform, for example as they are paid a share of the revenues from advertising placed alongside their videos. Creators may also earn revenues from other sources that are helped by their YouTube presence, including product sales, brand partnerships, or live performance engagements.

These revenue sources not only support jobs and income for the creators themselves, but also wider activity in their supply chains, and through workers’ spending. In total, our economic modeling suggests that YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed more than $35 billion to the US economy in 2022 and supported more than 390,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

In this report we provide further details of our economic analysis, as well as the findings of wider survey research to investigate how YouTube can sustain careers for content creators; help businesses grow; enrich cultures and communities; build skills; and provide connections.

Alongside the findings from our economic modeling and surveys, the report presents a series of case studies to highlight the personal stories of successful US content creators, ranging from providing mental health educational resources to bilingual children’s entertainment.

To download the reports, please complete the form below.

The experts behind the research

Hamilton and Alice, members of the economic impact team, bring years of experience in quantitative economic analysis working with clients around the globe and across sectors to build models, forecast markets and evaluate interventions using state-of-the art techniques.

Hamilton Galloway

Head of Consultancy, Americas

Alice Gambarin

Lead Economist, Economic Impact

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