As well as being one of the leading gaming market in terms of revenue in 2020, the United States is also considered by many as the birthplace of gaming as we know it today. In 2023, the number of employees in the video gaming industry in the United States reached over *** thousand.

The video game sector in the EU employed approximately ****** people in 2023. Of all EU countries, Germany had the biggest video gaming workforce with ****** video game workers. Outside the EU, the UK was the biggest video game industry, with over ****** workers.

In 2023, California was ranked first as the U.S. state with the highest direct in-state employment from the video game industry. The video game industry saw 44,205 jobs in California during that year. Additionally, the direct in-state employment from the video game industry was over 10,870 in the state of Washington.

In 2023, the computer games industry in the United Kingdom had approximately 48 thousand employees, up from 47 thousand employees during the previous measured period. The UK games industry contributed about 2.88 billion British pounds to the UK GDP on an annualized basis.

In 2023, the overall video game industry accounted for a total of 5,684 establishments and about 104,080 employees across the United States. Of these figures, 2,756 establishments were gaming software developers employing approximately 35,954 gaming industry workers.

Employment statistics on the Video Games Software Developers industry in the US

The Video Games industry in Wisconsin is expected to decline an annualized -x.x% to $x.x billion over the five years to 2025, while the national industry will likely decline at -x.x% during the same period. Industry establishments increased an annualized x.x% to x,xxx locations. Industry employment has increased an annualized x.x% to x,xxx workers, while industry wages have decreased an annualized -x.x% to $x.x million.

In 2024, the gaming sector experienced a significant number of layoffs because of post-COVID industry contraction which has led to studio consolidation and ultimately, an estimated 14,800 video gaming employees losing their jobs. Additionally, 2023 had also not been kind to the industry, as already 10,500 game developers lost their jobs during industry layoffs during the year.

In 2022, the Spanish video gaming industry registered around 9261 workers. Employment in the sector has been growing constantly since the analyzed period began and is expected to reach up to ***** working positions by 2026.

Employment statistics on the DVD, Game & Video Rental industry in the US

Long working hours are no rarity in the video game industry, and crunch culture is one of the darker parts of the sector. Crunch refers to compulsory overtime during game development, which is often uncompensated beyond regular work hours. A 2023 industry survey of workers involved with the video gaming industry found that 63 percent of respondents who were employees had experienced crunch more than twice in the past two years.

Graph and download economic data for Producer Price Index by Industry: Hobby, Toy, and Game Retailers (PCU451120451120) from Jun 2000 to Sep 2025 about game, toy, hobby, PPI, industry, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Producer Price Index by Industry: Doll, Toy, and Game Manufacturing: Other Electronic Toys and Games, Including Home Video Games (Excluding Cartridges, Disks, Tapes) (DISCONTINUED) (PCU33993033993029) from Jun 1999 to Jan 2016 about game, toy, video, electronics, housing, manufacturing, PPI, industry, inflation, price index, indexes, price, and USA.

According to an online survey conducted in January 2024, adults across selected markets generally thought that working in the video game industry was neither positive nor negative, with 43 percent of respondents sharing this opinion. Respondents in the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia had the highest rates of approval for this type of employment, with 48 percent and 47 percent, respectively, having a positive opinion. In contrast, only 19 percent of German adults viewed working in the gaming market favorably, while almost a third had a negative opinion.

During in 2021, Quebec had the highest concentration of video game industry employees in Canada, with 13,500 direct employees located there. British Columbia was second with approximately 8,700 FTE during the measured period.

As part of an ESRC funded PhD, this data consists of 21 out of 30* total interviews with 'older workers' (over 35) who work in the fields of 'Video' (film, TV, YouTube), 'Games' (computer games), and 'websites' (front and back end, content creation and UI/accessibility). The overarching research goal was to understand how, in the face of many challenges (related to training, accessing work, precarity, and long hours), which are compounded by life course events, people manage to sustain their creative careers. Interview questions were informed by a review of creative industries literature which paints a picture of challenging working conditions (e.g., precarity, long hours) which are also sites of 'inequality regimes' (Acker, 2006), meaning the industries studied are designed by and for white, middle-class men.

The data reveals interesting detail about the three fields of study, making it useful as a snapshot of the creative industries in the early 2020s. It is also filled with references to the Covid-19 pandemic lock downs, as this is when the interviews took place.

There is rich detail of 'inequality regimes' - particularly with reference to social class, gender, and age.

*The other 9 interviews are not included as participants did not give permission for them to be deposited with the UK Data Service.

Attaining and sustaining a career in the digital and creative industries is hard. Training that is often expensive and difficult to navigate, informal hiring practices, precarious employment, and long, intense, and inflexible hours, all come together to limit access and progression for many people. Moreover, as these conditions interact with people’s changing priorities and needs over the life course, the ability to sustain work is often not possible, reflected in the high rates of worker attrition (Carey et al., 2020; Steele, 2022). With a critical labour shortage in these industries, tackling the loss of older workers by addressing the challenges of digital and creative work is important. While there is much recent literature which speaks to the challenges (for example Brook, O’Brien and Taylor, 2020; Wallis, van Raalte and Allegrini, 2020), less is said about those people who have managed to sustain their careers in the face of these challenges, whose circumstances present examples of the conditions which are needed in order not to be ‘filtered out’. This thesis addresses this gap, exploring the strategies that older workers in the fields of Video, Games, and Websites have been able to use in order to sustain their careers.

A 2023 industry survey of workers connected to the video gaming industry found that 49 percent of respondents who were employees worked 40 to 44 hours per week on average. Only 19 percent of freelancer gaming workers reported the same regular weekly work hours.

This statistic represents the estimated distribution of job roles in the video game industry in Spain in 2019. Programmers made up the largest share of the workforce while an estimated ** percent of employees worked on programming.

According to a 2024 survey, men earned a considerably higher real annual salary than women across almost all job categories in the gaming industry. The pay discrepancy was the highest in marketing and acquisition, where men earned more than ** percent more than women annually, and in lead positions such as top management, where the salary for men was almost ****** euros higher than for women per year. The only category where women had a higher salary than men was game design and HR/recruiting, but the difference was small.

In 2023, the overall video game industry accounted for a total of over **** billion U.S. dollars of labor income in the United States, with the industry employing a total of ******* adults. The direct amount of labor income amounted to ***** billion U.S. dollars.