YouTube is now a $60 billion economy
Every so often a number lands that settles an old argument. This week YouTube put one on the table: its creative ecosystem added more than $60 billion to the US economy last year and now supports the equivalent of 540,000 full-time jobs.
We also went into our own data and found a small Australian animation studio quietly out-drawing most of television, one episode at a time. And in Creator on the Rise, we meet the ex-pharmacist who turned "is your degree actually worth it" into a following of more than a million.
Plus the travel brand that built an entire website around a single creator, and a week of releases led by the return of a beloved franchise. Let's get into it.
Brand new from ThoughtLeaders
Size Up Any Creator Without Leaving YouTube
Our new Chrome extension lays ThoughtLeaders data right over YouTube as you browse. Open any channel and the numbers you would normally go digging for are right there on the page, so you can tell whether a creator is worth a conversation without ever clicking away from the video. It is free to download from the Chrome Web Store, and it takes two clicks to add.
This week's deep dive
YouTube Is Now a $60 Billion Economy
On July 16, YouTube released its 2025 US Impact Report, with the economic analysis run by Oxford Economics. The headline figure is the one worth sitting with: YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed more than $60 billion to US GDP last year and supported the equivalent of over 540,000 full-time jobs. Both numbers are up from the year before, when the same report counted $55 billion and 490,000 jobs. In a single year the platform added roughly 50,000 jobs' worth of economic activity.
What makes this more than a press release is who did the counting. This is not YouTube marketing itself, it is a third party putting an audited figure on something creators have felt for years. And the money is not concentrated in two zip codes. According to the report, all 50 states now have at least ten channels pulling more than a million monthly views, which means creator income is being earned in places that never had a media industry to begin with.
The most telling stat is about small business, not stars. The report found that 76% of small and medium-sized businesses with a YouTube channel say the platform helped them reach new customers and grow. That reframes YouTube from an entertainment destination into a piece of small-business infrastructure, closer to a storefront than a TV network. As CEO Neal Mohan put it, "the creator economy is just getting started."
For a marketer, a report like this is quietly useful ammunition. When a finance team asks why the creator budget keeps growing, "$60 billion in GDP and 540,000 jobs, audited by Oxford Economics" is a very different answer than "creators are having a moment." It moves creator spend out of the experimental column and into the same conversation as any other channel that can point to hard economic weight. The category is no longer asking to be taken seriously. It has the receipts.
Zooming Out
There is a second number that rarely makes the headline: even as the aggregate crosses $60 billion, the median creator still earns well below a living wage. Both facts are true at once. The creator economy is a genuine macroeconomic force and a brutal power law, where a thin top layer captures most of the value. For brands, that is not a contradiction, it is the whole job. The money is real, and the entire game is finding the creators who actually command durable attention rather than the ones who simply exist in the count.
The story behind the numbers
From Our Data
Every Episode Is a Blockbuster
Meet GLITCH, a small animation studio out of Australia, and its flagship series The Amazing Digital Circus. On June 19 it dropped Episode 9, the season finale. Five weeks later it has pulled 79.3 million views. That alone would be the video of a lifetime for almost any creator. For GLITCH it is roughly par. The channel has 23.2 million subscribers, and across its last four full episodes it landed 137.7M, 154.6M, 92.5M and 79.3M views. This isn't a lucky hit. It's a pattern that should continue to build.
The Amazing Digital Circus, recent episodes by views
Ep 5: Untitled · Jun 2025
137.7M · 12x
Ep 6: They All Get Guns · Aug 2025
154.6M · 13x
Ep 7: Beach Episode · Dec 2025
92.5M · 8x
Ep 9: Remember · Jun 2026 (finale)
79.3M · 7x
Each bar is an episode's view count, with its multiple against the channel's typical upload (a median of about 11.9 million views). Every full episode runs 7 to 13 times that norm, and Episode 6 out-drew the finale of most prestige TV shows. There is no network here, no cable carriage, no theatrical window. GLITCH self-publishes on YouTube and runs a whole slate the way a studio would: alongside Digital Circus it has launched pilots for Gaslight District, Knights of Guinevere and Gameoverse, each opening to 20 to 30 million views. And the June finale carried no sponsor at all.
Why it matters
The most passionate, durable fandoms on the internet increasingly belong to indie IP that was born on YouTube and never needed a gatekeeper. That reach is real, it compounds for months after each drop, and a striking share of it is completely un-sponsored. For brands, the lesson is not to chase the trend of the week but to notice where owned audiences of this size actually live, and how much of that inventory nobody has bought yet. This is a studio that reliably delivers a hundred million views an episode.
Links Roundup
Quick hits from across the web
→ YouTube quietly turned playlists into full TV-style shows with seasons, episode numbers and a Continue Watching row, handing any Partner Program creator the scaffolding of a streaming service.
→ YouTube Studio can now generate royalty-free instrumental tracks to swap in for copyrighted audio, turning one of the most common demonetization traps into a two-click fix.
→ Instagram's Edits app came straight for CapCut with a heavy update: more than 200 sound effects, imported audio, a loudness-matching tool and a desktop version in the works.
→ Forbes' latest top creators list crossed a line that would have sounded absurd a decade ago: its top 50 collectively earned more than a billion dollars in a single year.
→ A new Public First study put TikTok's contribution to the UK economy at more than £10 billion in a year, arriving the same week as YouTube's $60 billion in the US that we focused on above.
Add to your watch list
Creator on the Rise
Shane Hummus
Careers & education • ~1.6M subscribers • US
Shane Hummus spent under four years as a pharmacist before deciding the more useful job was telling everyone else which degrees and careers are actually worth the money. His channel, now past 1.6 million subscribers, ranks college majors by real-world return, breaks down high-paying jobs you can land without a four-year degree, and treats "is this worth going into debt for" as the defining question of the decade. It is a lane that only widens as tuition climbs and AI reshapes which skills pay. What makes him worth watching for brands is the audience: young, decision-heavy viewers actively choosing careers, courses, software and financial products. That is one of the highest-intent, highest-value audiences on the platform, and it sits with a creator who earned its trust by being blunt, including about the degrees he thinks are a waste of money.
Advertiser Spotlight
Brand Strategies Worth Stealing
Expedia Built a Whole Website Around One Creator
Expedia named the YouTube and Twitch star IShowSpeed its official travel partner this year and built the campaign around a destination of its own: Exspeedia, a hub where his 150 million-plus followers can track where he is heading next, vote on future stops, enter to meet him, and, crucially, book the same trips through Expedia. It launched in April with a 12-hour livestream across four Caribbean islands that reached more than 400 million people and sent destination searches spiking, with Sint Maarten up 70% and Guadeloupe up 50%. This month Expedia pushed it further with "Going Places with IShowSpeed," a shoppable version where nearly every moment of his journey is instantly bookable.
The move worth stealing is refusing to treat a creator deal as a single post. Most brands buy one video, count the views and move on. Expedia built a persistent place, gave the creator's audience reasons to keep coming back, and then made the content itself bookable so attention can convert on the spot. There is a healthy progression in it too: the first phase bought awareness at enormous scale, and the next is engineered to turn that attention into actual bookings.
Trending on YouTube
What's going viral right now
The Avatar Franchise Takes Over the Week
Two Avatar drops land within two days of each other. "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender," the first feature from Avatar Studios, arrives on Paramount+ on July 25, with a short theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles from July 24 to 30. Two days earlier, "Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game" lets players face off as characters from The Last Airbender. Between the film and the game, one of the most beloved franchises of the century is set to blanket film, animation and gaming feeds at once with reactions, theories and combo guides. Watch the trailer.
Tyla Drops "A*POP" on July 24
The South African star's new album arrives July 24 and is being framed as the record that cements her as a global headliner. A fast-rising pop act is pure fuel for reaction videos, dance breakdowns and vocal-coach analysis across music YouTube. Watch the rollout.
Charli xcx Returns With "Music, Fashion, Film"
Out July 24 and recorded in Paris, Charli xcx's new album is her first big move since "Brat" turned her into a full cultural force. Expect pop YouTube to line up teardowns, first-listens and endless aesthetic breakdowns. Watch the rollout.
The Call of Duty League Championship Just Wrapped
The 2026 Call of Duty League crowned its champion on July 19 after a weekend of grand-final matches, and the upsets, clutch moments and highlight reels have been dominating gaming YouTube in the days since. Esports finales like this keep generating recap and reaction content long after the trophy is handed out. Watch the highlights.
