"A prominent economist once stated, "computer chips, potato chips, what's the difference." The short answer is "a lot." Fifty-five years after the invention of the integrated circuit and 28 years after the first dot-com website was registered, information and communications technology (IT) remains a central driver of innovation and prosperity.
"This fact sheet lists 53 documented economic benefits of IT, from jobs and output to competitiveness and innovation."
Includes fascinating tidbits, like
- Between 2001 and 2011, over 565,000 IT-related jobs (in all industries) were created in the United States, an increase of 22.2 percent. IT jobs grew more than 95 times faster than employment as a whole, which grew by only 0.2 percent.
- In 2011, IT workers earned $78,584 a year, 74 percent more than the average worker ($45,230). Accounting for just the growth in these high-paying IT jobs, U.S. GDP was over $89 billion larger in 2011 than it was in 2001.
- Even during the Great Recession and its aftermath, when overall jobs were declining, IT jobs grew. Between May 2007 and May 2011, IT jobs grew by 6.8 percent, contributing $37 billion to an economy that was otherwise stagnant.
- From 2000 to 2009, service-sector companies that used IT intensively grew jobs at a rate of 5.1 percent, while non-IT intensive service companies expanded jobs by only 1.5 percent.
- The Internet creates 2.6 jobs for every job it eliminates.
- IT was responsible for 75 percent of U.S. productivity growth from 1995 to 2002, and 44 percent from 2000 to 2006.
- IT workers contribute three to five times more to productivity than non-IT workers.
- In Deloitte’s 2011 Technology Fast 500 Ranking, a ranking of the fastest growing high-technology firms in the United States, 330 of the 500 companies were in the IT industry.
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