Thursday, November 27, 2008

Economic Contribution of Australian (c) Industries

Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Australian Copyright Council have just released a report into the economic contribution of Australian copyright industries.

There are a number of interesting points to the report with findings that 837,507 people or 8% of the Australian workforce are employed by copyright industries (compared with 8.3% in 1996). The industries generated economic value equal to 10.3% of gross domestic product and $6.873 billion in exports or 4.1% of total Australian exports.

The value added of copyright industries has grown from $58.9 billion in 1995/96 to $97.8 billion in 2006/2007. Core copyright industries compounded annual growth over this period was 5.1% per year and across all related industries 4.7% per year with the greatest growth value being in software and databases (10.4%) with music theatrical productions and operas growing 2.7% per year.

Core industries have also experienced compound annual growth in employment with software and databases increasing 7.3% per year and music, theatrical productions and operas increasing 1.4% per year. There has also been an increase in the average wage of those engaged in these industries up from $51,572 in 1995/96 to $61,355 in 2006/2007.

This report does not paint a picture of an industry in distress but shows that while there has been some overall drop in the percentage of Australians employed in the copyright industries that there continues to be some growth in both the core and related industries that depend on intangible works.

Further Reading
Australian Copyright Council/Price Waterhouse Coopers, Making the Intangible Tangible: The Economic Contribution of Australia's Copyright Industries (November 2008) <http://www.copyright.org.au/bcepv04.pdf> at 27 November 2008

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