We might turn to the technology sector, but, strictly speaking, this sector remains a relatively small part of the economy. In the United States it currently contributes around 6.8 per cent of the value added from private companies and employs about 2.5 per cent of the labour force. By comparison, manufacturing in the deindustrialised United States employs four times as many people. In the United Kingdom manufacturing employs nearly three times as many people as the tech sector. This is in part because tech companies are notoriously small. Google has around 60,000 direct employees, Facebook has 12,000, while WhatsApp had 55 employees when it was sold to Facebook for $19 billion and Instagram had 13 when it was purchased for $1 billion. By comparison, in 1962 the most significant companies employed far larger numbers of workers: AT&T had 564,000 employees, Exxon had 150,000 workers, and GM had 605,000 employees. Thus, when we discuss the digital economy, we should bear in mind that it is something broader than just the tech sector defined according to standard classifications.

Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, loc. 15