App Economy as an economic development driver? PPI report raises questions

Even employing a “conservative estimate of spillover jobs”, the Progressive Policy Institute’s updated report on employment related to the App Economy works out to just over one job per published application. Total January 2022 employment reported in PPI’s U.S. App Economy Update, 2022, was estimated at 2.564 million jobs. While up 1.7 percent from the August 2020 update, the figure is only nominally higher than the cited 2.1 million apps launched in 2021 alone.

PPI used three job groupings in making their estimate. “Core” app economy jobs include those direct IT-jobs that use skills to “develop, maintain and support mobile applications.” This first group, estimated from related job postings on Indeed, can range from app developers, software engineers, security engineers, and any domestically based help desk support. Indirect app economy jobs comprise the second group and include those non-IT jobs that support core app positions in the same company. The third group, “spillover jobs” is an estimate of any “job in the local economy that is supported either by the goods or services purchased by the enterprise or the income flowing” to workers in the first two groups.

The drive to remote work resulting from the pandemic led PPI to revise their methodology for calculating the geographic location of app economy jobs.  Their new, preliminary approach, which “will likely change in future updates as we better understand the nature of remote work” still yields California with the largest share of the App Economy at 408,000 jobs. The only other states surpassing 100,000 jobs in early 2022, in rank order are: Texas, Washington, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Unsurprisingly, only Washington is not also among the nation’s six most populous states.

U.S. App Economy Update, 2022 is available for download from the Progressive Policy Institute website.