Two Reports Released on Digital Economy

Vice President Gore announced the release of Digital Economy 2000, the Commerce Department's third annual report on the information-technology (IT) revolution and its impact on the economy. The Department found while IT industries only represent 8.3 percent of the U.S. economy, they accounted for approximately 30 percent of the country's economic growth since 1995. Nearly one-third of all company-funded R&D investments in 1998 were made by IT industries. IT also accounts for at least half of the recent acceleration in U.S. productivity growth. IT employment doubled to 1.6 million during the six-year period of 1992 - 1998. The full report can be downloaded from: http://www.esa.doc.gov/de2000.pdf

Independently, the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas -- Austin released a Internet Economy Indicators study looking at the impact of the Internet on job growth and revenues for four segments of the Internet Economy: Internet Infrastructure, Internet Network Applications Infrastructure, Internet Intermediaries and Internet Commerce. The study was based on a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. companies that generated all or some of their revenues from products and services related directly to the Internet. The results include:

• The Internet Economy directly supports 2.476 million workers. For comparison, that is more than insurance, communications and public utilities, and twice as many as the airline, chemical and allied products, legal and real estate industries. Internet-related jobs grew by 36 percent between 1998 and 1999.
• Revenues for Internet-related companies grew at an annual rate of 11 percent from 1998-1999, three times the rate of growth for the economy as a whole during the same period.

The study can be downloaded from http://www.internetindicators.com