Crowdfunding and Employment: An Analysis of the Employment Effects of Crowdfunding in Spain

This is the first attempt to measure the jobs created by projects funded through crowdfunding (crowd-jobs). This new economic way of financing is already a tangible economic reality made up of 452 active crowdfunding platforms worldwide, which have raised almost $5.1 billion and funded more than 1 million campaigns in 2013. In Spain, a prototype of an economy in recession, crowdfunding platforms attracted 400 million euros and 2,825 crowdfunding projects in 2012. The funds raised by the successful projects (5,137,648 €) have created around 3,000 direct jobs (crowd-jobs), which represent just 1.61 % of the total target budget (success rate). One year later, the total target budget has decreased (332,145,063 €), however the funds raised by the successful projects have increased (8,526,094 €), especially in the Social and Cultural Sector, creating more crowd-jobs (5,635) and improving the success rate (2.57 %) in 2013. Since the analysed period only spans 2 years (2012–2013), any conclusion is tentative. All in all, the results seem to suggest that the Spanish crowdfunding market is becoming more efficient, specialised and increasing solidarity, although, again, it is still too soon to consider these tendencies as consolidated patterns and any extrapolation of trends is premature. The economic crisis and the structure of the Spanish economy seem to be responsible for these tendencies, although the expansion of the crowdfunding market should also be considered as a tentative explanatory variable of the observed tendencies in Spain.