For a while there, the creator economy felt like it was plateauing. After years of explosive growth, the MBO Partners data showed flatness in 2023 and 2024. Big platforms were cutting revenue-sharing programs. AI-generated content was making it harder to stand out. The "creator economy bubble" think pieces were circulating.
And then 2025 happened.
According to the MBO Partners 2025 State of Independence report, the number of independent content creators in the United States jumped 13% last year to 10.1 million. That is the largest single-year increase since 2021. And the story behind that number is more interesting than the number itself.
What Changed in 2025
Three things shifted at once.
The platform economics got better - selectively. YouTube expanded its monetization eligibility in late 2024, dropping the threshold for the Partner Program. Substack continued to grow as a direct-pay alternative to ad-dependent models. TikTok's creator fund was replaced with a higher-paying program. None of these individually are dramatic, but together they reopened the math for people who had abandoned creator income as too uncertain.
AI tools cut production costs dramatically. This one is real and direct. A solo video creator who used to need $300-500 in editing time per video now does it for $30-50 with AI tools. A newsletter writer who used to spend 8 hours per issue now spends 3. The economics of creating content at a quality level that attracts subscribers improved meaningfully, and solo operators captured most of that benefit.
The demographics broadened. This is the part that surprised me most in the report. After years of being a young person's game, older creators - the MBO report calls them "granfluencers" - are among the fastest-growing segments. Creators over 50 are building audiences around retirement planning, health, cooking, travel, and exactly the things that young-skewing platforms have historically underserved.
Who Is Actually Making Money
The 10.1 million figure covers anyone earning income from independent content creation - YouTube, podcasting, newsletters, social media, stock photography, online courses, and similar work. It does not require full-time income. Many of these creators have day jobs or other businesses.
But the report does distinguish between part-time and full-time creators, and the full-time segment is growing faster. About 1 in 5 independent creators in 2025 reported that content creation was their primary income source, up from about 1 in 7 in 2023.
The MBO data also shows that creators who use AI tools report higher satisfaction and higher confidence about their long-term prospects than those who don't. 84% of all independent workers say they are happier working for themselves than they were in traditional employment - a number that has remained remarkably stable despite all the economic turbulence of the past few years.
The $66,000 Context
It helps to have a comparison point. The MBO report notes that the typical U.S. worker salary is approximately $66,000. Among the full independent workforce - not just creators - a record 5.6 million people now earn over $100,000 annually.
The creator economy is not uniformly lucrative. Most creators earn modest supplemental income, not six figures. But the ones who build durable, direct-pay audiences - paid newsletters, memberships, recurring Substack subscriptions, YouTube channels with reliable ad revenue - are demonstrating that the model works at multiple scales.
For someone thinking about starting, the bar to earn $1,000-2,000 per month from a small but loyal audience has dropped significantly. That is not a full business. But it is a meaningful hedge against income volatility, which is exactly what a lot of small business owners and self-employed workers are looking for right now.
The Side Gig Bridge
One data point in the MBO report that I keep coming back to: 36% of traditional employees now report having a side gig. And nearly half worry about job loss.
The creator economy is partly absorbing that anxiety. People are not just starting newsletters because they love writing. They are building a second income stream while they still have a first, so they have options if the employment situation changes.
That is a very different calculus than "quit your job and become a creator." It is a hedge, not a leap. And 10.1 million people doing it at once has moved the needle in ways that are now showing up in the aggregate data.
If you are already a solopreneur or small business owner, the creator layer - a newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel about your actual work - is not a distraction from your business. It is distribution for it. The creators who are building real income in 2025 are mostly not building "creator businesses." They are building audiences around expertise they already have.