Incomes by gender of artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers
Income levels vary between cisgender men, cisgender women, transgender people, and non-binary people
A few weeks ago, I showed that transgender and non-binary people gravitate to artist occupations. Based on data from the 2021 census, I found that artists represent 1.9% of all transgender people and 5.1% of all non-binary people in the Canadian labour force. Both percentages are much higher than those for cisgender women (1.1%) and cisgender men (0.9%). I did not have the space for an analysis of incomes in that post.
Today’s post examines the median incomes of cisgender women, cisgender men, transgender people, and non-binary people within four broad groupings of occupations: artists, arts leaders, workers in cultural occupations, and all Canadian workers.
Details about the occupation groups included in each of these categories are available at the end of this post.
I had to receive special approval of the portion of my custom request from the 2021 census related to transgender and non-binary workers. Because of concerns over data reliability, I did not request separate data on transgender women and transgender men, nor did I ask for statistics on transgender and non-binary people in each of the 10 artist occupations. This post examines income statistics for artists as a group, for arts leaders as a group, and for cultural occupations as a group.
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Context: Women, transgender, and non-binary workers have lower incomes in general
In my previous post, I indicated that 73,800 transgender and non-binary Canadians have an occupation, including 40,400 transgender and 33,400 non-binary people. Both transgender and non-binary Canadians have lower personal incomes than cisgender women and, especially, cisgender men.
As shown in the chart below:
Cisgender men have the highest median incomes ($54,400).
Cisgender women have median incomes of $45,600, 16% lower than cisgender men.
Non-binary workers have median incomes of $31,400, 42% lower than cisgender men.
Transgender workers have median incomes of $36,400, 33% lower than cisgender men.
The rest of this post examines median incomes in the arts and culture.
Incomes are particularly low for transgender and non-binary artists, arts leaders, and other workers in the arts, culture, and heritage
Artists
For artists, as shown in the chart below:
Cisgender men have the highest median income ($32,800).
Cisgender women have median income of $28,800, 12% lower than cisgender men.
For the 1,700 non-binary artists, the median income is $24,600, 25% lower than cisgender men.
For the 800 transgender artists, the median income is $22,600, 31% lower than cisgender men.
Among artists, there are significant gaps between cisgender men and other genders, but the gaps are lower for artists who are women or non-binary than for all Canadian workers. The gap is similar for transgender people (-31% for artists and -33% for all workers).
All of these statistics relate to 2020, a year with many pandemic lockdowns and slowdowns in artistic activity. It was also a year when many artists and cultural workers received support from pandemic assistance programs. (An analysis by Statistics Canada showed that 63% of eligible workers in the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector received at least one payment from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit in 2020.)
It is impossible to know whether the lockdowns and slowdowns in artistic activity or the CERB payments had a greater impact on the differences in median incomes between artists and other workers. If the CERB payments had a greater stabilizing effect on incomes than the artistic shutdowns and slowdowns, it would have the effect of decreasing the income gaps between artists and other workers in 2020.
Arts leadership occupations
The chart below shows that, among arts leaders:
Cisgender women have the highest median personal income ($58,400), 3% higher than cisgender men.
Cisgender men have median income of $56,800.
The 380 non-binary arts leaders have a median income of $32,800, 42% lower than cisgender men. (For consistency with other statistics in this post, the percentage differences relate to cisgender men.)
The 130 transgender arts leaders have a median income of $26,400, 54% lower than cisgender men.
Relative to the income differences for all workers:
The huge gap between transgender people and cisgender men who are arts leaders (-54%) is higher than the gap for all Canadian workers (-33%).
The gap between non-binary people and cisgender men who are arts leaders is equal to the gap for all Canadian workers (-42% for both).
The median income of cisgender women who are arts leaders is as high as that for cisgender men.
Interestingly, the finding that women arts leaders have slightly higher personal incomes than men runs counter to my own analysis of median employment income by occupation, which showed that women who attain arts leadership positions have lower earnings than men, except for one arts leadership occupation (producers, directors, and choreographers).
There are three important differences in the analyses:
Today’s post refers to total personal income, not employment income.
Today’s post provides a finer-grained analysis of gender, with separate categories for cisgender women, cisgender men, transgender people, and non-binary people. Statistics Canada classified some transgender and non-binary people as “women +” and “men +” in the dataset that was available for my previous analysis.
Today’s post groups all 5 arts leadership occupations, something that was not possible in the analysis of employment incomes.
All workers in the arts, culture, and heritage
The final chart in today’s post relates to workers in all cultural occupations. For this grouping of occupations:
Cisgender men have the highest median income ($49,600).
Cisgender women have a median income of $44,000, 11% lower than cisgender men.
The 4,700 non-binary workers have a median income of $30,200, 39% lower than cisgender men.
The 2,700 transgender workers have a median income of $31,800, 36% lower than cisgender men.
The gap in median incomes between cisgender women and cisgender men is lower in the arts, culture, and heritage (-11%) than for all workers (-16%). However, the gaps for transgender and non-binary people are similar to those for all workers.
Occupation lists
Statistics Canada’s full occupation titles for the 10 occupation groups included as artists are:
Actors, comedians, and circus performers
Artisans and craftspersons
Authors and writers (excluding technical writers)
Conductors, composers, and arrangers
Dancers
Musicians and singers
Other performers (including buskers, DJs, puppeteers, face painters, erotic dancers, and many other entertainers)
Painters, sculptors, and other visual artists
Photographers
Producers, directors, choreographers, and related occupations
The five arts leadership occupations are:
Conductors, composers, and arrangers
Conservators and curators
Library, archive, museum, and art gallery managers
Managers in publishing, motion pictures, broadcasting, and the performing arts
Producers, directors, choreographers, and related occupations
The statistics on workers in arts, culture, and heritage occupations include people who work in 52 occupation groups, including:
Heritage occupations such as librarians, curators, and archivists
Cultural occupations such as graphic designers, print operators, editors, translators, architects, and professionals in fundraising, advertising, marketing, and public relations
The occupational perspective counts people who work across the economy, as long as they are classified into one of the selected occupation groups.
A list of the 52 cultural occupation groups is available in my post from May 18, which also outlined the methods behind choosing these 52 occupation groups. In a post on April 18, I highlighted some strengths and limitations of the census for counting artists and cultural workers.