YouTube’s Creator Economy Impact

YouTube enables content creators to reach large domestic and international audiences, generating substantial economic value. Creators receive income directly from the platform, for example, through a share of revenues from advertising placed alongside their videos. They may also earn additional revenues from other sources influenced by their YouTube presence, such as product sales, brand partnerships, or live performance engagements. 

These diverse revenue streams not only support jobs and income for the creators themselves, but also stimulate wider economic activity within their supply chains and through workers’ spending. 

Beyond this economic analysis, the research further investigates values and perceptions, including how YouTube can sustain creator careers, help businesses grow, enrich cultures and communities, build skills, and foster connections. These insights are gathered from three distinct surveys of creators, businesses, and users. 

This document outlines key terms used across market reports, details the survey methodology and response counts, and explains the impact methodology used to calculate Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) jobs and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per country. 

Glossary of Terms

Business: The types of businesses included in the analysis vary according to the claim. Our Business survey gathered insights from businesses that own a YouTube channel; those that advertise on YouTube; and those that use YouTube for other reasons, such as staff training. 

These groups are not mutually exclusive and a business may fall into two or more of these categories. 

Creator: Anyone who uploads one or more videos of any subject matter to YouTube, whether they earn revenue or not as a result.  

Creators who earn money from YouTube: Content creators who are paid money directly by YouTube (e.g., from Ads, YouTube Premium, Channel Memberships, Super Chat, or other ways to earn).  

Full-time equivalent job: A full-time equivalent (FTE) job represents the amount of work equivalent to one person working full time. For example, one FTE could reflect that a creator works on YouTube for 35 hours a week. Or it could reflect two creators each working 17.5 hours. 

Media business: Includes Broadcasting and Content Providers, Radio Broadcasting Stations, Television Broadcasting Stations, Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers. 

Music business: Includes Music Publishers, Sound Recording Studios, Record Production and Distribution, Other Sound Recording Industries, Musical Groups and Artists. 

Shorts: YouTube Shorts is a way to browse, watch, and create short-form videos (60 seconds or less) from a smartphone. Further details are available here. 

Small & Medium Business (SMB): For the purposes of this report we define SMBs as businesses with fewer than [XX] employees. The number of employes varies by market, subject to the definitions of SMEs according to government statistics per country. For each market: 

Country	SME Definition
Brazil	<250
United States	<500
Canada	<500
EU27	<250
France	<250
Germany	<250
United Kingdom	<250
Australia	<200
India	<250cr annual revenue/ turnover and <50cr investment value
Indonesia	<100
Japan	<300
South Korea	<300

User: Individuals 18+ years of age who view video content on YouTube for any purpose, at least once a month. 

YouTube’s Creative Ecosystem: YouTube supports an ecosystem of creators who earn revenues both on and off the YouTube platform. This ecosystem also encompasses creators’ employees, as well as businesses and freelancers in their supply chains that earn a substantial portion of their revenue from creators. 

Survey Methodology

Oxford Economics surveyed YouTube Users, Creators, and Businesses that use YouTube. All surveys were prepared by Oxford Economics and fielded online in January and February 2025.  

The User survey was sent to a representative sample of each country’s population, by age, and gender, with responses weighted to reflect the characteristics of YouTube’s user base. 

The Creator survey was sent out by YouTube to its creator community in each country, with Oxford Economics collating and checking responses to ensure a good mix of creators with different sized audiences, as measured by the number of subscribers to their largest channel. 

The Business survey sampled different sizes of firms in each country that use YouTube in different ways: as content producers (with a particular focus on music and media companies), as advertisers, and as users of YouTube content for other business purposes.  

The following table represents the number of responses for each survey across each country: 

Country	Creator	Business	User
Brazil	6100	600	3000
United States	4500	600	6100
Canada	1300	600	4000
EU27	5900	2400	14000
France	1100	600	3000
Germany	1400	600	3000
United Kingdom	2000	600	3000
Australia	1100	600	3000
India	25500	600	3000
Indonesia	5700	600	3000
Japan	3400	600	3000
South Korea	1500	600	3000

Economic Modeling Methodology Q&A

What types of creators does the economic modeling include? 

Our models include “creative entrepreneurs,” who we define as individuals or businesses with at least 10,000 subscribers to their largest channel, and those with fewer subscribers who either earn money directly from YouTube, earn money through their YouTube videos from other sources, or permanently employ others to support their YouTube activities. We also model the impact of media companies and music companies. 

How did we estimate the GDP contribution of YouTube’s creative ecosystem? 

The total pay-out from YouTube in 2024 was provided by YouTube. We estimate distribution of these payouts across endemic, media, and music creators using results from our survey of YouTube content creators and published information on music industry revenues. Off-platform revenues were estimated from creator and business survey responses.  

We estimated the direct GDP contribution of creative entrepreneurs by subtracting intermediate costs from revenue associated with YouTube activity (the “production” approach) from the creator survey. The direct GDP contribution of music and media companies was estimated by applying a standard GDP:output ratio to the revenue estimates. 

We then used an “input-output” model—in essence, a table showing who buys what, and from whom, in the economy—to estimate both the supply chain (indirect) and worker spending (induced) impacts. In line with standard practice for these types of studies in the US (only), we specifically used the IMPLAN model for this purpose. In other countries, we use Oxford Economics’ developed input-output models. 

Our results are presented on a gross basis: in other words, they do not consider what the resources used by content creators or stimulated by their expenditure could alternatively have been deployed to do. 

Do the results exclude any activity connected with YouTube? 

Our estimates exclude the economic contribution of YouTube’s own operations, and the benefits that businesses receive from increased sales as a result of advertising on YouTube. 

How did we estimate the total jobs supported by YouTube? 

Full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs supported amongst creative entrepreneurs were estimated from survey responses relating to the weekly hours spent working on YouTube. We only included responses from creative entrepreneurs who spend at least eight hours per week working on YouTube. Jobs supported amongst creative entrepreneurs’ permanent employees were also estimated from survey responses. 

Jobs supported by media and music companies, and through indirect and induced impacts for all types of creator, were estimated by applying productivity assumptions to the GDP results.