The National Endowment for the Arts issued a report on artists in the workforce last week, and some of the data are surprising. (Go here and click on #48 for the pdf file.)
Highlights:
There are 2 million people in the United States with primary artist occupations.
The main artist occupations are designer (39 percent), performing artist (musician, actor, entertainer, dancer etc. — 17 percent), fine artist/art director/animator (11 percent), architect (10 percent), writer (9 percent), producer/director (7 percent), photographer (7 percent).
In 1970, artists made up less than 1 percent of the U.S. labor force.
From 1970 to 1990, the number of artists more than doubled (737,000 to 1.7 mil), a larger gain than that of the labor force as a whole.
Since 1990, the growth in artists has paralleled the growth of the labor force.
In 2000, California and New York were home to 27 percent of the nation’s total.
The West and the South have enjoyed the largest growth rates for artists. For example, from 1990 to 2000, Florida and Georgia had 23-percent growth, double the national average. Twenty-nine percent of all artists live in the West, 29 percent in the South.
In terms of number of artists per 10,000 people, the states ranked as follows:
1. New York (101 artists per 10,000 people in the state)
2. California (97.6)
3. Massachusetts (91)
4. Vermont (84)
5. Colorado (85.4)
6. Hawaii (84.1)
7. Connecticut (84)
8. Oregon (80.5)
9. Washington (78.8)
10. Nevada (77.9)
Top cities ranked by percentage of artists in the labor force are:
1. San Francisco
2. Santa Fe
3. Los Angeles-Long Beach
4. New York
5. Stamford-Norwalk
6. Boulder-Longmont
7. Santa Cruz-Watsonville
8. Danbury, CT
9. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria
10. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett
