It's taken us a while to get around to posting a link to this, but the DCMS published its latest Creative Industries Economic Estimates in December last year. They mostly refer to 2010, though some measures, such as GVA, refer to earlier years (2008 for GVA). The DCMS is at pains to point out that this year's figures can't be compared directly to previous ones, owing to the introduction of the new SIC 2007 codes. As a result, it calls these 'experimental' statistics.
The 2010 estimates suggest that there are 182,000 creative enterprises in the UK, 8.7 per cent of all businesses. Creative employment in Great Britain (i.e. excluding Northern Ireland) totalled just under 2.3m. Of these, 1.3m worked in the creative industries themselves (4.4% of all employment), with another 1m employed in creative jobs in other firms. Software & Electronic Publishing is the largest sub-sector.
For what it's worth, the last set of estimates, for 2008, using the old SIC codes showed total creative employment of just under 2.0m. (Whether we will get figures for 2009 remains unclear.)
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