PPI Chief Economist Michael Mandel was quoted in iTWire, an Australian based technology news source, on his most recent report “Jobs in the Australian App Economy”. Mandel just returned from Australia where he discussed the findings of his report. This article gives a rundown of Mandel’s policy memo:
Australia has become an international hotbed of mobile app developers, says a report (a ‘policy memo’) from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a US based think tank that served as an ‘idea mill’ for President Bill Clinton.
The report’s author, Dr Michael Mandel, says Australia compares favourably with both the US and the UK, having a slightly higher proportion of core app economy jobs as a share of all ICT jobs. “Perhaps more interesting, Sydney and Melbourne are roughly on par with New York City and London. The San Francisco-Silicon Valley region, of course, is far ahead.”
He says Australia has 140,000 people employed in the app economy, with more than half (77,000) of them in New South Wales. “We note that Australia stacks up well against the US and the UK when it comes to App Economy employment per capita.”
