US crypto industry employs just 34,000 but will contribute $55 billion to the economy in 2026

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Bitcoin Magazine

Crypto’s US Workforce Is Tiny, But Industry Punches Above Its Weight: Report

The crypto industry may be relatively small in terms of employers — but the economic contribution is big.

That’s according to a new report published by the National Cryptocurrency Association and the Pragmatic Policy Group, which reveals that while only 34,000 people are employed by crypto companies, the industry will contribute $55 billion in 2026 to the U.S. economy.

The report, “Crypto at Work”, which claims to be the first to comprehensively analyze the crypto industry’s footprint in the U.S. labor market, said that jobs in the space also average $133,000 a year — more than double the $64,000 national median wage, and ahead of average pay in tech of and manufacturing.

“Crypto creates many jobs outside the tech industry and directly supports more jobs than key manufacturing industries,” the report said.

Using a standard input-output economic model, PPG calculated that every direct crypto job supports roughly six additional jobs elsewhere in the economy — at suppliers, and at businesses where crypto workers spend their paychecks.

Stacking those indirect and induced jobs on top of the direct total produces a figure of 232,000 jobs in total that the industry supports.

By raw headcount, though, crypto remains a small employer. The report itself benchmarks its 34,000 direct jobs against coffee and tea manufacturing (28,400 jobs) and tobacco manufacturing (10,600 jobs) — hardly the scale of a major American industry.

The industry’s footprint is also geographically lopsided: California, New York, and Texas account for 60% of all crypto jobs, with 57,600, 53,800, and 26,500 respectively.

Heartland states—Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas among them — together support just over 17,000 jobs. The report singles out Colorado and North Dakota as rising hubs, pointing to Colorado’s crypto-friendly tax policy and firms like Riot Platforms and Crusoe Energy, and North Dakota’s flare-gas mining operations and a pilot stablecoin from the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

PPG describes the study as the first comprehensive, economy-wide look at crypto’s labor market impact, built on 2024 Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The firm also flagged a limitation in its own approach: because “a dedicated crypto workforce profile does not yet exist,” it modeled crypto’s financial activities using the occupational mix of broader technology industries rather than traditional finance.

NCA, which funded the research, said it hopes the findings give policymakers “an evidence-based understanding of the sector’s economic contribution.” The nonprofit launched in 2025 to promote what it describes as safe, informed cryptocurrency adoption in the U.S.

This post Crypto’s US Workforce Is Tiny, But Industry Punches Above Its Weight: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo .