A report issued by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) indicates that the U.S. videogame industry employs almost 32,000 people and adds $4.9 billion in value to the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
Video Games in the 21st Century (PDF) also claims that the industry achieved an annual growth of 10.6 percent per year from 2005 through 2009, eclipsing the 1.4 percent annual growth rate posted by the U.S. economy as a whole. Outside of a staid 2009, when sales of entertainment software totaled $10.5 billion, sales rose each year from $7.0 billion in 2005, to $7.4 billion in 2006, to $9.5 billion in 2007 and $11.7 billion in 2008.
The report notes that while government reports do not typically break out entertainment software sales separately from overall software sales, it did do so twice in 2002 and 2007. Figures from those two years showed a 127.5 percent gain, as receipts from sales of entertainment software rose from $3.9 billion in 2002 to $8.9 billion in 2007. The 127.5 percent jump looks even better next to figures from those two years which showed that software sales in general only rose 24.57 percent.
Using the website GameDevMap as a source, the ESA report concluded that six states (California, Texas, Washington, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois—listed in order of number of employees) housed 74.13 percent of all employees in the game business.
The report used a variety of sources to come up with the $4.9 billion figure in relation to value added to the GDP. These sources included Game Developer Research and Salary Reports in addition to press releases. A pair of tables showing some of their handy work in arriving at the final figure is shown below.
