For an industry that wasn’t even around in 2007, the “app economy” has grown significantly in the past five years.

TechNet sponsored a study to show the growth of what they call the “app economy.” There are now 466,000 jobs in the area of creating apps for smart devices. That’s a huge number for an industry that’s only 5-years-old.

The study was conducted by Dr. Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics. He found that jobs in app development were spreading throughout the nation. The top metro area for app jobs is New York City, while California is the top state for app jobs. While California and New York make up a large portion of app development, two-thirds of all app jobs are outside of those two states. The study also suggests the app economy is growing quickly and the number of app-related jobs are expected to increase exponentially in the coming years.

“America’s App Economy – which had zero jobs just 5 years ago before the iPhone was introduced – demonstrates that we can quickly create economic value and jobs through cutting-edge innovation,” Rey Ramsey, President and CEO of TechNet, said. “Today, the App Economy is creating jobs in every part of America, employing hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers today and even more in the years to come.”

The full study, which can be found here, has some more interesting details on the growth of this new sector. The key platforms in app development are revealed to be Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Facebook and Windows Phone.

The study goes on to say that the app is the new front door for consumer-focused companies. It allows them to directly interact with consumers in a way that was never imaginable before.

An interesting detail in the section “Sizing the App Economy,” it’s revealed that all third-party app developers for Facebook have created 182,744 full-time jobs in the U.S. alone.

App developers employ the second largest number of people in the IT sector. They are only behind custom computer programming which employed over 600,000 people as of November 2011.

The overall growth of the app market has been strong with job ads looking for app developers increasing by 45 percent in the past year.

This app economy continues to grow and will be a viable economy as long as wireless and social networking platforms grow.