Creative industries add £124bn of value to UK

The economic contribution of the UK creative industries grew by 6.8 per cent in 2022 to reach £124.6bn, according to official UK government estimates.

In real terms, this means the economic value of the UK creative industries was 12 per cent bigger in 2022 than before the COVID pandemic and more than 50 per cent larger than its size in 2010.

Using the government's official economic measure of Gross Value Added (GVA) in chained volume measures, the creative industries grew more than twice as fast in 2022 as the UK economy as a whole. Since 2010, the creative industries have expanded according to this measure by 50.3 per cent, compared to the UK economy's average increase of 21.5 per cent during the same period. Creative industries account for 5.7 per cent of total UK GVA.

‘IT, software and computer services’ comprises the largest subsector component of the creative industries by GVA (£53.4bn in 2022). It is more than twice the size of the next largest subsector, ‘Film, TV, video, radio and photography’ which contributed £20.8bn in 2022.

The largest contributions to the increase in creative Industries GVA from 2021 to 2022 were the ‘IT, software and computer services’ subsector, the ‘Publishing’ subsector and the ‘Film, TV, video, radio and photography’ subsector, which grew by 7.3 per cent, 10.1 per cent and 5.4 per cent respectively. All segments of the creative industries grew their GVA from 2021 to 2022, apart from the crafts subsector, which fell by 6.8 per cent.

Read more about the government statistics.

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