Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
An interesting story in the AP detailing a study that claims just under half a million jobs have been created by the ecosystem of apps. Hopefully the other side of Schumpeter’s law.
- Looking for a promising career in a lousy economy? A new study suggests you’re apt to find it in apps — the services and tools built to run on smartphones, computer tablets and Facebook’s online social network. The demand for applications for everything ranging from games to quantum physics has created 466,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2007, according to an analysis released Tuesday by technology trade group TechNet.
- The estimate counts 311,000 jobs at companies making the apps and another 155,000 at local merchants who have expanded their payrolls in an economic ripple effect caused by increased spending at their businesses. (the latter figure is a bit weak to include but I’m trying to positive here)
- Apps makers were adding jobs even when the overall U.S. unemployment rate climbed to as high as 10 percent in late 2009, Mandel said. That bodes well for even more vigorous growth if the economy can extend a gradual recovery from the Great Recession.
- Today, there are more than 500,000 apps available for the iPhone and Apple’s iPad tablet. Some are given away for free in an attempt to make money from ads. Others are sold by young and old entrepreneurs, as well as major companies.
- As its audience has grown from about 58 million users in 2007 to 845 million today, Facebook has hatched perhaps the most successful apps company so far in Zynga Inc. The San Francisco-based maker of online games such as FarmVille and Words With Friends already employs about 2,800 people and has leased enough office space to hire thousands more during the next few years.
- The seeds for even more job growth have been planted by a proliferation of other mobile devices designed to run on operating systems made by Google Inc., Research in Motion Ltd. and Microsoft Corp. More apps are likely to be coming into homes as more TVs and appliances, including refrigerators and washing machines, are wired for Internet access.
- For all its progress and future promise, the app economy remains a small fraction of the broader technology industry. TechNet estimates about 3.5 million people are working in technology jobs — occupations revolving around computers and mathematics.
- TechNet reasons every apps programming job hatches another position in other non-technical areas such as sales, marketing, human resources and other administrative chores. (accurate)
- The study also presumes the job growth in apps spurs more local spending on goods and services that encourages more hiring at neighboring businesses. Quantifying this domino effect can be tricky. (perhaps in locales with a high concentration of said folks such as San Fran, but not in areas they make up a tiny fraction of the working population) The TechNet study found that the highest concentration of app jobs is in the technology hotbeds of the San Francisco Bay area (nearly 15 percent of the positions), New York (9 percent) and Seattle (nearly 6 percent).
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