Artists in the workforce : 1990-2005 : executive summary

National Endowment for the Arts

ARTISTS IN
THE WORKFORCE

1990-2005

America tends to see its artists as visionaries, rebels, outsiders, and eccentrics. These
long-standing stereotypes have become mainstays of popular culture— perhaps
because they are so entertaining. A troubled dreamer, a footloose bohemian, or
a charming deadbeat can steal the scene from any workaday character. Presented from
whatever perspective — adoring, puzzled, bemused, or even hostile — these stereotypes
almost always portray artists as outsiders, fascinating creatures who somehow manage to
survive on the margins of society.

The purpose of the new NEA report, Artists in the Workforce, is to demonstrate — in
cold, hard, unpoetic facts — that such caricatures misrepresent American artists and even
contribute to their marginalization in society.

The time has come to insist on an obvious but overlooked fact — artists are workers. They
make things and perform services, just like other workers, and these goods and services
have value — not merely in lofty spiritual terms but also in dollars and cents. Without
denying the higher purposes of the artistic vocation, this report shows that artists play an
important role in America's cultural vitality and economic prosperity.

There are now almost two million Americans who describe their primary occupation as
artist. Representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, artists constitute a sizeable class of
workers — only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel
in the U.S. military (2.2 million). Artists represent a larger group than the legal profession
(lawyers, judges, and paralegals), medical doctors (physicians, surgeons, and dentists), or
agricultural workers (farmers, ranchers, foresters, and fishers).

The size of the artistic community gives the group enormous aggregate income —
approximately $70 billion annually. In terms of sheer numbers, artists represent a powerful
labor force whose economic contributions go largely unrecognized by both the general
public and the government.

Compared to other U.S. workers, American artists tend to be better educated and
more entrepreneurial. Artists are twice as likely to have earned a college degree as other
members of the U.S. labor force, though they receive relatively less financial compensation
for their educational level. Artists are also 3.5 times more likely to be self-employed.
American artists have learned to be creative not merely in their chosen fields but also in
how they manage their lives.

Artists in the Workforce also documents the maturation of American cultural life. The
number of artists in the U.S. has remained constant as a percentage of the population for
the past 15 years. Between 1970 and 1990 the number of artists doubled in the United
States — reflecting the great expansion of theaters, galleries, orchestras, and presenting
venues as well as the steady growth of both university programs and the entertainment

industry. In that heady climate, artists grew at nearly twice the rate of the overall labor
force. As the current survey demonstrates, the number of artists is now growing at
approximately the same rate as the total labor force. The stability of this measurement
suggests the place of artists in the American workforce has achieved a point of equilibrium.

American artists continue to cluster in large metropolitan areas. The greater Los Angeles
area is now the major employer of artists in the U.S., followed by New York, Chicago,
Washington, and Boston. More than one-fifth of American artists live in those five areas,
and artists and arts organizations play a major role in local economies. Not surprisingly,
artists gravitate to areas where there are employment possibilities from cultural institutions
and creative industries.

Yet artists continue to spread across the country. The West and the South have
experienced the greatest recent growth in artist populations — reflecting larger
demographic and economic trends. Sunbelt cities dominate the list of metropolitan areas
with the highest per capita concentration of artists. Nine of the top fifteen cities with
the highest concentrations of artists are now in the Sunbelt: San Francisco, Santa Fe, Los
Angeles, Boulder, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Nashville, Orlando, and San Luis Obispo.

While American artists are not unemployed, they remain conspicuously underemployed.
One-third of artists work for only part of the year. Actors, dancers, choreographers,
musicians, and other entertainers are especially vulnerable to seasonal unemployment.
These statistics reveal a huge loss of cultural and creative expertise. Such widespread
underemployment seems almost tragic in a nation whose public schools have increasingly
eliminated arts education.

There is no way to understand the new American economy without recognizing the role
of its two million creative workers. In the 21st century, entertainment is an American global
industry. Design is an essential element of all consumer products and services. Writers,
broadcasters, actors, animators, musicians, and producers create the programming that
drives the new electronic media. In cities across the nation, performing arts centers occupy
key civic positions of enormous economic impact, and the arts have become indispensable
to local community identity. Communities have also discovered that attracting creative
workers and industries bolsters their economies.

From global exports to local investments, the new American economy depends on
imagination, innovation, and creativity, and those are the skills that artists develop, nurture,
and promote. Isn't it time that the nation notices?

Dana Gioia

Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

This report uses United States census occupation data to analyze artists' demographic
and employment patterns. It represents the first comprehensive look at the nation's
working artists in the new century. The study also marks the first use of American
Community Survey data to profile artist occupations.

Seewww.nea.gov/research/ResearchReports_chrono.html to obtain the full report.

KEY FINDINGS

Nearly two million Americans
are artists.

■ 1-99 million Americans identified an artist
occupation as their primary job.

■ The total excludes many people with secondary
employment as artists — an estimated 300,000
Americans.

■ Designers are the single largest group of artists,
followed by performing artists such as actors,
dancers, musicians, and announcers.

Artist occupations, 2003-2005

Fine artists, art directors,

and animators

11%

Architects
10%

Writers _
and authors
9%

Producers

and directors

7%

Photographers

7% Performing artists

17%

2. The number of artists has kept
pace with the growth in the overall
labor force.

■ After doubling from 1970 to 1990, artists
have begun to hold steady as a proportion of
American workers (1.4 percent).

■ Writers were among the fastest growing artist
occupations from 1990 to 2005 — growing at
twice the rate of the total labor force.

2,500,000

160,000,000

140,000.000

20,000,000

100,000,000 g"

80,000,000
60,000,000
40,000,000
20.000.000

1970 1980

1990

2000 2005

f«M

3. Artists remain highly concentrated
in urban areas.

■ Half of all artists live in 30 metropolitan areas.

■ More than one-fifth of all U.S. artists live
in 5 major metropolitan areas: Los Angeles,
New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and
Boston.

■ But as a percentage of the labor force, artists
cluster in a diverse array of towns and cities.

Top 10 metropolitan areas ranked by percentage
of artists in the labor force

Total artists

1 . San Francisco, CA (PMSA)*

3.71

2. Santa Fe, NM

3.36

3. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA (PMSA)

3.26

4. New York, NY (PMSA)

3.12

5. Stamford-Norwalk, CT (PMSA)

3.01

6. Boulder-Longmont, CO (PMSA)

2.64

7. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA (PMSA)

2.37

8. Danbury, CT (PMSA)

2.28

9. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Lompoc, CA

2.25

10. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA (PMSA)

2.16

Selected artist occupations: Top 10 metropolitan areas ranked by percentage of artists in the labor force

Musicians

1 . Nashville, TN

0.65

2. Lawrence, KS

0.31

3. Los Angeles-Long Beach,
CA (PMSA)

0.29

4. Bloomington, IN

0.29

5. New York, NY (PMSA)

0.27

6. Sarasota-Bradenton, FL

0.27

7. Hattiesburg, MS

0.26

8. Myrtle Beach, SC

0.25

9. Trenton, NJ (PMSA)

0.24

10. Punta Gorda, FL

0.24

Actors

1 . Los Angeles-Long Beach,
CA (PMSA)

0.34

2. New York, NY (PMSA)

0.17

3. Medford-Ashland, OR

0.13

4. Orlando, FL

0.08

5. Wilmington, NC

0.07

6. Ventura, CA (PMSA)

0.07

7 Jersey City, NJ (PMSA)

0.07

8. Stamford-Norwalk, CT
(PMSA)

0.06

9. San Francisco, CA (PMSA)

0.05

10. Santa Barbara-Santa
Maria-Lompoc, CA

0.05

Writers and authors

1 . Santa Fe, NM

0.41

2. San Francisco, CA
(PMSA)

0.39

3. Boulder-Longmont, CO
(PMSA)

0.37

4. New York, NY (PMSA)

0.36

5. Bloomington, IN

0.36

6. State College, PA

0.32

7. Los Angeles-Long Beach,
CA (PMSA)

0.32

8. Stamford-Norwalk, CT
(PMSA)

0.31

9. Missoula, MT

0.30

10. Corvallis, OR

0.29

Fine artists, art directors,
and animators

1 . Santa Fe, NM

1.12

2. San Francisco, CA (PMSA)

0.55

3. Santa Rosa, CA (PMSA)

0.39

4. Los Angeles-Long Beach,
CA (PMSA)

0.38

5. New York, NY (PMSA)

0.38

6. Barnstable-Yarmouth,
MA

0.37

7. Stamford-Norwalk, CT
(PMSA)

0.37

8. Santa Cruz-Watsonville,
CA (PMSA)

0.37

9. Fort Collins-Loveland, CO

0.36

1 0 San Luis Obispo-Atas-
cadero-Paso Robles, CA

0.35

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Special Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Tabulation.

•PMSA = Primary metropolitan statistical area, as defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget.

4. The artist population, like the labor
force, is becoming more diverse.

■ The percentage of non-Hispanic white artists
dipped from 86 percent to 80 percent between
1990 and 2005.

■ In 2005, Hispanic, Asian, and Native-
American artists accounted for nearly 15
percent of all artists — up 6 points from 199° •

■ Over a 15-year period, the proportion of
African-American artists has remained steady,
at 5 percent.

5. Artists are generally more educated
than the workforce as a whole.

■ Artists are twice as likely as the overall labor
force to have graduated from college.

■ The proportion of artists with degrees is
rising — from 51 percent in 2000 to 55 percent
in 2003-2005.

■ Architects, writers, and producers show the
highest education levels.

Percentage with a
bachelor's degree or higher

Overall labor force

28%

All artists

55%

6. Artists are 3.5 times more

likely than other workers to be
self-employed.

■ More than one in three artists is self-
employed, compared with less than IO percent
of the labor force.

■ 40 percent of all musicians work in the non-
profit sector — far more than any other artist
group.

Percentage
self-employed

Overall labor force

10%

All artists

35%

7. Fewer artists have full-year, full-
time jobs than other workers.

■ One-third of all artists work fewer than
50 weeks a year.

■ 28 percent of artists work for less than
35 hours a week.

■ Actors have the lowest level of full-year, full-
time employment — 15 percent.

Percentage of full-year,
full-time workers

Overall labor force

61%

All artists

55%

8. Artists generally earn less than
workers with similar levels of
education.

■ Artists earn $6,000 less annually than other
"professional" workers.

■ Dancers have the lowest median annual
income— $15,000.

9. Women remain underrepresented
in several artist occupations.

■ Four out of five architects and announcers,
and almost two-thirds of musicians, producers,
and photographers, are men.

■ Yet three out of four dancers are women, as are
more than half of all designers and writers.

M/AI "VJI

FFSTIVAL

10. The West and South have seen the
greatest growth in artists by state.

■ The West was led by Nevada, Utah, Oregon,
and Arizona. In these states, the artist
population grew at 2-5 to 5 times the rate
of that of the U.S. labor force (ll.6 percent)
from 1990 to 2000.

■ Florida and Georgia led the South with a
23 percent growth in artists — double the
national average.

■ 29 percent of all artists now live in the West,
and another 29 percent in the South.

Top 10 states ranked by number of artists
per 10,000 people

Total artists

1 . New York

101.1

2. California

97.6

3. Massachusetts

91.0

4. Vermont

87.4

5. Colorado

85.4

6. Hawaii

84.1

7. Connecticut

84.0

8. Oregon

80.5

9. Washington

78.8

10. Nevada

77.9

Selected artist occupations: Top 10 states ranked by number of artists per 10,000 people

Actors

1 . California

5.3

2. New York

4.2

3. Nevada

1.3

4. New Jersey

1.1

5. Florida

1.0

6. Minnesota

0.9

7. Illinois

0.9

Z Utah

0.9

9. Oregon

0.9

10. Connecticut

0.9

Designers

1 . Massachusetts

36.9

2. Connecticut

36.5

3. Rhode Island

36.2

4. New York

34.5

5. California

34.1

6. Michigan

32.8

7. Colorado

32.6

8. Minnesota

31.9

9. Oregon

31.6

10. Washington

314

Architects

1 . Massachusetts

12.9

2. Colorado

12.7

3. Washington

11.7

4. Vermont

10.7

5. Hawaii

10.3

6. New York

9.3

7. Connecticut

9.1

8. Oregon

9.1

9. Maryland

9.0

10. California

8.5

Entertainers and
performers

1 . Nevada

8.9

2. Florida

3.4

3. Hawaii

2.9

4. California

2.0

5. Arizona

1.8

6. New York

1.5

7. Colorado

1.5

8. Tennessee

1.4

9. Texas

1.3

10. Vermont

1.3

Fine artists, art directors,
and animators

1 . New Mexico

18.1

2. Vermont

16.2

3. Hawaii

14.9

4. Montana

13.0

5. New York

12.6

6. California

12.4

7. Alaska

12.3

8. Maine

12.1

9. Oregon

11.4

10. Colorado

10.9

Musicians

1 . Tennessee

11.8

2. Hawaii

10.1

3. Nevada

8.9

4. New York

8.6

5. California

7.8

6. Florida

6.9

7. Massachusetts

6.9

8. New Jersey

6.8

9. Colorado

6.4

10 Minnesota

6.2

Dancers and
choreographers

1 . Nevada

6.9

2. Hawaii

4.7

3. Alaska

2.0

4. Arizona

1.5

5. Utah

1.4

6. Florida

1.4

7. New York

1.4

8. Nebraska

1.2

9. Texas

1.1

10. Oklahoma

1.1

Writers and authors

1 . Vermont

11.3

2. New York

10.8

3. Massachusetts

9.8

4. California

9.0

5. Oregon

8.6

6. Connecticut

8.1

7. Colorado

8.1

8. Maine

7.9

9. Maryland

7.7

10. Montana

7.5

Source: U S Census Bureau. Census 2000 Special Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) tabulation

A Great Nation Deserves Great Art.

NATIONAL
ENDOWMENT
FOR THE ARTS

1 100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20506-0001

(202) 682-5400

WWWJBl8.gOV

Not for sale -Available for free at www.arts.gov