Size and Shape of the Workforce
Total Employment
The chart below shows total employment across the three key interactive media sectors included in Skillset’s 2004 Employment Census. A total of 53,100 people were working in these areas on Census Day.
Altogether, 84% of the workforce was working as employees and 16% as freelancers on the day of the survey, with little variation between sub-sectors.
Women, Ethnic Minorities and Disabilty
The representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people is shown in the chart below. Overall, just over a quarter of the interactive media workforce is female, compared with 38% across the audio-visual industries as a whole. Employment of women in the electronic games sector is especially low at 8%.
Around 7% of the workforce is classified as ethnic minorities, which is the same as the proportion who are ethnic minorities across the entire audio visual workforce. Throughout the whole of Great Britain, 8% of the population of working age are ethnic minorities, but this rises to 35% in London, where much of the workforce is based.
The proportion of ethnic minorities working in computer games is substantially lower than average at 3%.
This is almost certainly related to the wide geographical distribution of the sector, as shown in Overview of the industry throughout the UK, and the lesser concentration in London where the labour force contains higher proportions of ethnic minorities.
Occupations
Within web and internet and offline multimedia, over one third of people are engaged in generic roles, classified in the table as ‘Other’. These roles include managing directors and other general management roles, all administrative posts and essentially all occupations not specific to interactive media. These roles make up a much smaller proportion of the workforce within computer games, at 17%.
Between 30-40% of people in all three sectors are employed in creative or content production related roles (the first four listed below).
Age
The figure below shows the age profile of the three sectors, and again there are considerable differences. In particular, the age profile of the workforce in electronic games is especially young: 79% are aged under 35 compared with 69% of those in web design and development, with none classified as over 50 compared with 10% of those in web design and development.
Qualifications
The 2003 Workforce Survey also recorded the highest qualifications held by respondents. The chart below shows the percentages holding each type of qualification within each sub-sector (bearing in mind previous caveats about sector classifications).
Within the audio visual industry as a whole, the proportion of the workforce qualified to graduate level is exceptionally high, at 66%.
However, all three interactive media sectors greatly exceed even this level of graduate employment. In total, 86% of those in web design and development are graduates, 69% of those in computer games, and 91% of those in CD Rom and other multimedia. In all three sectors, the majority of degrees held are in non-media related subjects.
