35 Insightful and Valuable LinkedIn Statistics

Knowing your social platforms inside and out is hugely important for a marketer. We've put together a list of stats, facts, and visualizations on LinkedIn so you can get the best out of the platform.

Our LinkedIn statistics below will take you through the company’s formation all the way up to and past Microsoft’s acquisition of the social media platform. Get to know LinkedIn better.

LinkedIn history facts

LinkedIn was founded on December 28th 2002 and launched on May 5th 2003
It was founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Jean-Luc Vaillan, Eric Ly, and Konstantin Guericke
In November 2003 LinkedIn received investment from Sequoia Capital
The site saw a slow start with just 6,000 sign ups in the first month
After the first six months, this had grown to 37k
In early 2005, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Jobs, their first attempt to make money from the site
2006 sees the company make a profit for the first time
The company went public in May 2011 with the first share traded at $45
In June 2016 it was announced that Microsoft would be buying LinkedIn for $26.2bn, or $196 per share, their most expensive acquisition to date
LinkedIn contributed $2.3bn in revenue for Microsoft in 2017
By this point LinkedIn had over 450m users, with it now currently sitting at 562m
Jeff Weiner is the current CEO of LinkedIn

LinkedIn demographics and user statistics

25% of all US adults are on LinkedIn
44% of users are women
The platform attracts people with higher paying jobs, with 45% of people earning over $75k saying they use LinkedIn compared to just 13% of those earning under $30k.
There are 46m students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn
More than 70% of members are outside of the US
Two thirds of millionaires use LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s notable acquisitions

Company Acquired	Date	Cost
Slideshare	May 3 2012	$199m
Pulse	April 11 2014	$90m
Bright.com	Feb 6 2014	$120m
Lynda.com	April 9 2015	$1.5bn

LinkedIn usage statistics

106 million people access the site on a monthly basis
More than 1 million members have published content on LinkedIn’s Pulse platform
The average CEO has 930 LinkedIn connections
57% of traffic comes from mobile
Only 17% of US small businesses use LinkedIn
As of July 2 2018 there are 24.5m company pages on the platform

LinkedIn marketing statistics

LinkedIn gets revenue from 4 areas of its business: Talent Solutions (recruitment), Marketing Solutions (ads), Premium Subscriptions, and Learning Solutions (training)
In 2015, before the platform was acquired by Microsoft, LinkedIn saw ad revenue hit $581m
The most represented industry on LinkedIn is Information and Technology Services
75% of people who have recently changed jobs used LinkedIn to help them decide
The site hosts 10m active job postings
LinkedIn generated $1.3bn in revenue in Q2 2018 alone
64% of social referrals to corporate websites come from LinkedIn

Joshua Boyd

Content and Community Manager

Share this post

Search the blog

Brandwatch Bulletin

Offering up analysis and data on everything from the events of the day to the latest consumer trends. Subscribe to keep your finger on the world’s pulse.

Get the data