From the Wall Street Journal today:
There are 27 million paid content creators in the U.S., and 44% of them say social media is their full-time job, consultant The Keller Advisory Group found.
This is simple enough. It means there are about 12 million full-time social media content creators (FTSMCC) in the US.
But does this pass the laugh test? Do full-time social media content creators really make up 7% of the entire labor force? Let's take a look at how that pencils out:
These numbers suggest content creation is by far the biggest job category in the US. And social media content creators rank 7th, ahead of teachers, construction workers, truck drivers, IT workers, and admin workers.
There are only two possibilities here: (a) these numbers are bullshit, or (b) the business press should be paying way more attention to social media content creators since they're a massive part of the economy. Either way, the Journal needs to clean up its act.
It’s a Rupert Murdoch paper. Lying is baked into the WSJ’s DNA. If they didn’t lie about pretty much everything, the editors wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.
What I don’t understand is why Kevin gives Murdoch money every month to help him destroy America.
Yeah, this has to be the WSJ taking some deeply flawed analysis from Keller at face value. The most obvious guess is that Keller pushed an online survey to a sample of people who included a bunch of 14-25 year-olds making like $50 a month off of random Instagram reels, and either the kids lied, or Keller designed the survey in such a way that ended up twisting these kids' responses to "this is their full-time employment!"
Obviously social media content creation has a long tail that very few real jobs, even freelance ones, tend to have: there's a tiny number of people who make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off of it, and then an enormous number making peanuts off of monetizing very low-audience content. Anyone can post an Instagram reel or literally pay Elon $8 to get Twitter Blue and a few pennies of rev-sharing money back!
I assume WSJ readers are getting the news they want; they choose to pay for it.
Which leaves us to ask, is it that they prefer the make-believe world they're fed, or is it that they just don't know any better (are choosing because of brand, or peer effects, or similar)?
I suspect like with Fox, for most consumers it is a bit of column A and a bit of column B. But the proportions matter a lot.
Does this include people working on freelance porn sites like Onlyfans etc? If so I imagine it’s more than you think even if it’s not 12 million. Only takes around 2000 subscribers paying $10 a month for ‘niche’ content to make that kind of work a good earner if you are so inclined.
The "FTSMCC" are the serious folks making a living off their content creation. The others are just doing it as a side hobby, hoping they'll be able to quit their regular job.
As I recall, in some visions of the future where AI, bots and AI-equipped bots have taken over most jobs, people are bored and need things to fill the waking hours.
The 27 million likely include foreigners - people without US citizenship and Americans living abroad - who “work in the US” so they can be paid in dollars / avoid taxes in their home country / whatever, even if their only US presence is having some kind of access to a US bank or PayPal account. In other words, very similar to how lots of corporations allegedly earn all their worldwide income in Ireland, giving Ireland these astronomical GDP.
And since they couldn’t possibly have surveyed all 27m, the 44% is merely a sample that the surveyors could reach, which may not be reflective at all of the whole population. (They probably couldn’t reach any of the foreigners in the 27m.)
Yeah, no way this survey is even remotely accurate. One out of every five workers in the US is not an online content creator. That said, there are a handful out there on YouTube, Instagram, and OnlyFans who make a spectacular amount of money and it would be interesting to understand those numbers. But I would probably look to an outlet other than the WSJ -- which appears to have devolved into a slightly less tabloid-y version of the NY Post or The Sun at this point -- for that reporting.
Is "content creator" the new "actor"? And how many of the full time ones are still living in mom's basement or filming from their bedroom?
😄😄😄👍👍
New Report Shows That 96% Of Online Creators Make Less Than $100K per Year
I'm sure that's true. Also true, probably: 96% of online creators make less than $100 per year.
Day Traders?
Spec Screenwriters?
Venture Capitalists?
Under its prior stewardship, the opinions pages and especially the editorials were a wreck but the actual reporting was top rate. But in the last few years, their reporting has fallen down a lot- do they still do investigative reports? Whatever one says about the Wash Post, their in depth reporting is still very good. On one daily issue alone, I can read about UAE supporting the Sudanese civil war, Lebanon life and of course Ukraine drones, not to mention local issues like psychiatrist hospitals failing in Maryland.
What's the share of those 27 million paid content creators in the U.S. that are going through a divorce? I get the sense from the article it's close to 100%. I can understand why.
Ad people have been replaced with 'content creators'.
It's probably just a reorganization of titles which mashes things which used to be different. Like 'truck driver' includes dump trucks, delivery trucks, long haul trucks, but weirdly not 'bus driver'. It's all driving a commercial vehicle, even though it's all vastly different.
But many stores now have a 'content creator' who creates their ads and promotions - and many are hobbyists publishing travelogues and streaming their backyard cams and making only a few bucks here and there but it shows up in tax data.
I'm a social media person with a YouTube channel. It's even modestly successful (14k subscribers) with one or two videos than went viral.
And, over the two years I've been running it, I've made enough money to ... maybe make one mortgage payment. There is no way 14 million people are making a living this way. For that vast majority, it's a fun hobby that brings in a tiny amount of cash as gravy.
But that's not what this sort of survey says. You don't have to make enough money to life for it to be your job title.
Enjoy my off topic spit take,
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-pardon-hunter-biden/
Reminds me of the great moment in 2008 when Sarah Palin pardoned a turkey.
https://youtu.be/7HEFmFOlSaQ?si=b7kRWGyAcCIDPbtz&t=22
Look at how compassionate these Republicans are!
The number is probably juiced by young people living and by stay-at-home parents whose social media accounts are their only source of income.
I don’t know about content creators but looking at the support for Donald Trump it’s pretty clear that there are more horse’s asses in this country than there are horses.
I didn't see a link to the Keller report, but this should be an easy statistic to check, should it not?
By the way, what is with the chart in "thousands"? Out of what? It looks like you converted millions to thousands but was it that in the BLS report you trust the numbers for the other categories and just plugged in what the survey purportedly said.
That's a lot of money and people taking money for creating virtually zero value. Even if it's not that many, seems like a huge bubble.