Beyond Creative Industries

An important new study by Statscan finds that:

Culture workers and their knowledge, skills and creativity are relevant for producing goods and services outside the culture sector, according to a new study on the role of culture occupations in the economy.  ... [It] used employment data from the 1991, 1996 and 2001 censuses, examined the extent to which employers in non-culture industries, such as manufacturing, relied on culture workers and their skills as inputs into productive processes during the 1990s. It found that almost half of all culture workers were employed in non-culture industries, particularly in four sectors: manufacturing, business services, educational services and retail trade ... This suggests that forms of creativity other than purely scientific and technical expertise were also relevant for producing goods and services.

Moreover, core culture employment in manufacturing increased by 55%, a rate far higher than overall employment growth in manufacturing during the 1990s. For business services, core culture employment almost doubled over the decade, an increase that was also larger than overall employment growth in business services. This suggests that producing manufactured goods and business services relied to a greater degree on creative design work at the end of the decade than at the beginning.

The study also examined where core culture workers tend to be employed. Firms located in large cities hired culture workers to a much greater extent than those located in small cities and rural areas.

Click here for the full report; here is a related study charting trends in Canada and the US.