If you read about, participate in, or study the creator economy, you'll quickly learn that while a small share of independent creators earn a lot of money, most earn very little.
Harvard Business Review's The Creator Economy Needs a Middle Class nicely covers this.
The HBR article's author, venture capitalist Li Jin, was also recently quoted in Fast Company's Web3 investor Li Jin thinks a Universal Creative Income can help bolster the 'passion economy' on this topic. Key quote:
"The creator economy follows this extreme power law curve where a very small sliver of creators were able to make a living ... Most creators exist in this state of precarity and are barely earning anything ... the vast majority of creators were just kind of scraping by earning a little bit of income here and there."
And data from the 2022 MBO Partners State of Independence study backs this up.
This study asked independent digital content creators (freelancers, self-employed, etc.) about their creator economy earnings.
The results fit with Jin's assessment of creator economy income. Key quote from the study:
"32% of Independent Creators make less than $5,000 annually, while only 10% make more than $100,000. About one-third (36%) report making between $5,000 and $30,000, while 22% make $30,000-$100,000."
In other words, about two-thirds of independent content creators (68%) report earning $30,000 or less from their creator economy work.
But the MBO Partners study also surveys Americans with traditional jobs.
And it turns out that about 17% of traditional job holders report they work in the creator economy. This equates to about 25 million Americans.
About half (47%) of this group report working full-time in the creator economy, with the other half (53%) saying they work part-time.
The chart below shows the reported income distribution for full-time creators with traditional jobs.
There isn't a standard definition of the middle class. But Pew Research defines "middle class" households as those earning $52,000 to $156,000 annually in 2020 dollars for a household of three.
This is not a perfect comparator with the MBO Partners data above. The MBO Partners data is for a single job, and the Pew data is for a household of 3 (many of which have two incomes). But it's a good enough comp for a blog post.
And according to Pew, in 2021, 29% of American households were lower income, 50% middle income, and 21% upper income.
After adjusting for the two income issue with the Pew data, this is similar to the MBO Partners data on full-time creators.
So there is a creator economy middle class. But its members mostly have traditional jobs.
We'll have more on the creator economy in the near future. Emergent Research (that's us) worked with MBO Partners on this study.