Let me begin with a disclaimer. This industry includes firms that are pure internet-based activities, like hosting and web searches as well as ones that are being disrupted by the internet like newspapers and broadcasting.
Information Industry's share of GDP 1947-2010
Starting with the Information industry's share of GDP (from page 119 of my book), while it has grown over the last 50 years it is still around 4% of GDP as of 2010.
However, the Information industry represents only 2% of the 170 million jobs in the US economy.
In this treemap of all occupations in the US economy, each occupation is represented by a rectangle, the bigger it is the more jobs it has. Look at the upper right corner to see Information's share of jobs. The dark red represents the percentage of jobs loss and the only area more red than the Information sector is Manufacturing.
Now drilling into just the Information industry, some of the bigger occupations are: editors, computer software engineers, customer service representatives, telecommunications equipment installers, reporters and finally producers & directors. Out of that list only producers & directors had job growth between 2001-2011.
If you are interested in the income of these occupations or want to explore additional industries take a look at my book.
Data used in these graphics was based on BLS Occupational Handbook (provided by
EMSI) and value-added GDP from the BEA. The area graph was created in Omnigraphsketcher and the treemaps by R. Label were later added using Illustrator.
