Australia's artist labour market is under real financial strain. Between the 2001 and 2006 census, employment in artist occupations plunged 15 percent. By contrast, total employment rose 10 percent.

This is the first time artist employment has grown by less than total employment – and it has done so dramatically.

Over the period there was a $4,000 widening of the ‘income gap’ – the measure of how much artists’ full time incomes are below incomes of comparable occupations – as well as a shift toward arts related occupations such as teaching.

There might be a number of ways to explain this, but I argue in my article Australia’s creative revolution, that the main cause is an explosion in creative participation among the general population. Between 2001 and 2007, the number of Australian adults doing cultural work rose by 52 percent, or nearly six times the growth in population. The number of people involved in work in arts activities – culture’s ‘creative core’ grew by nearly 100 percent over the six year period. These figures come from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey that measures 'work' broadly defined - not just employment, but also casual, short-term and voluntary work. The biggest expansion was in unpaid work.

I argue that this massive increase and broadening of production is the primary reason for the problems seen in professional artists’ employment: it represents a large increase in the supply of cultural labour that has increased competition and reduced financial returns in the artists' labour market.

There may be parallels in the data for Europe and other countries.

The full article is at my blog site:
Australia’s creative revolution>
artspolicies.org

The article uses data I produced while working in research at the Australia Council for the arts. Links to the full data compendium can also be found at my blog site. I hope you find it useful and interesting.