Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus (left) and Neil Roseman, Zynga’s vice president of engineering, host prospective employees at a recruiting event in Pioneer Square last year. (Zynga photo)

The newly created “app economy” has created approximately 25,000 jobs in the Seattle/Tacoma area.

A study released Tuesday (Feb. 7) by TechNet, a bipartisan network of tech CEOs, reported that since 2007, some 466,000 app jobs have been created in the United States. Of those, 6.4 percent were in Washington state – nearly all in the Seattle/Tacoma/Bellevue area.

The so-called “app economy,” which has exploded in the four years since the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, generated an estimated $20 billion in revenue last year, according to a study by the consulting firms Appnation and Rubinson Partners, Inc.

Seattle, home to 5.7 percent of all app jobs created in the U.S. over the four years, was the fourth-highest metro area on TechNet's list. Topping the list were New York with 9.2 percent, San Francisco with 8.5 percent, and San Jose/Silicon Valley with 6.3 percent.

Washington's share of 6.4 percent of jobs ranked third among states in the study, following California with 23.8 percent of jobs and New York with 6.9 percent.

The study, done by former BusinessWeek economist Michael Mandel, used a database put together by the economic and business association, The Conference Board, which compiles online help-wanted advertisements updated daily and categorized according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s occupational categories.

Mandel estimated that there were 952,000 want ads for all computer and mathematical occupations in the 90-day period of the study, and stated in his report that app economy jobs made up 4.7 percent of the total tech jobs listed nationally.

The new app economy jobs include programmers, user interface designers, marketers, managers and support staff.

John Drescher, executive director of TechNet Northwest, said 311,000 of the total app economy jobs were at companies making the apps, and 155,000 were at merchants such as T-Mobile, Amazon and AT&T, which have added staff to support the new market.

Washington state was an important part of that.

“It’s an area we’re clearly leading in,” Drescher said.

Drescher said the study did not name companies that created the most jobs. The study did cite, as an example of "pure" app companies, Zynga, the San Francisco maker of Facebook game Farmville, which last year opened a Seattle office and made a splash with its recruiting. Other local app companies include Ubermind, which helps businesses develop apps; Inrix, which helps companies use traffic data in apps; and Zumobi, which has built ad-supported apps for national companies including REI and MSNBC.

Mandel stated in the report that he believes it offers a conservative estimate of the impact of the app economy and that the economy is likely to continue growing, depending on how wireless and social-network platforms develop in the future.

Emily Parkhurst covers technology for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal. She can be reached at 206-876-5441 or eparkhurst@bizjournals.com. Follow her on Twitter: @emilyparkhurst.