Creative Skillset workforce survey 2014 results
Creative Skillset have run a workforce survey across the creative media sectors. They collected information from over 4,800 people, and this year the great positive surprise is that there are more games respondents than ever before: 564 respondents for our sector (12% of all responses)!
There is a report with the combined creative media sectors results available HERE, weighted according to estimates of the size of each sector.
When looking at games sector results specifically, here are some of the highlights:
86% of the workforce is permanent staff, and 14% freelance. This 14% is amongst the lowest of the creative media sectors. The figure for the creative media industry (all survey respondents, weighted) is 30% of freelancers.
86% of the games workforce have contracts (78% in creative media industry workforce).
The average annual income in the games workforce is £34,200, a 11% increase since 2010 and £300 higher than the creative media industry (£33,900). This is also significantly higher (+25%) than the mean average income of UK working population at £27,271. Still, men earn more than women (£35,300 compared to £30,700, a 15% difference).
Looking at training, 2/5 (40%) of the games workforce have current training or skills development needs (lower than the creative media industry at 47%). Unsurprisingly the areas of skills need are craft and technical (49%) and skills using software packages (39%).
While just over 2/5 (42%) of the games workforce have undertaken training in the past 12 months (lowest level since 2005, lower than the creative media industry at 51%), the average number of training days is high, at 27.1 in the last 12 months, almost double the amount of days in 2010 and the highest across the wider creative media industry. Please note that training includes formal and informal training, structured self-tuition, on-the-job training, mentoring and self-taught skills. Most popular training subjects are in the broad categories of craft or technical (43%) and leadership and management (30%), followed by business skills (18%).
Notably the games industry had a higher use of online reference material/resources in its training at 53%, versus a wider creative industries use of 23% for that mode of training. The barriers to training are fees too high (26%) and hard-to-assess quality of courses (23%).
In diversity terms, Creative Skillset use their Employment Census as the definitive measure of both BAME and gender representation, the last 2012 figures for the games industry were that the representation of women was at 14% and BAME representation was at 4.7%. However there are figures in this report for age, disability and sexual orientation.
The games workforce has the youngest profile in the creative media industry: 68% are below 35 years old, compared to 48% in the overall creative media industry or 35% of the UK working population. Age profile of women working in games is even younger, with 79% being under 35 years old. The 5% of the games workforce that identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual is lower than in the wider creative media workforce (7%) and also lower than the UK Government estimate of 6% for population as a whole.
Looking at the type of school attended, 57% attended a non-selective state school in the UK, 12% a selective state school, 18% a school outside of the UK and 12% an independent or fee-paying school in the UK. 46% of the games workforce have a parent or guardian educated to degree level, higher than the creative media industry as a whole (44%).
The full games report, with additional breakdowns and information will be available on Creative Skillset website in a few weeks, for a fee.