78% more artists in Alberta in 2021 than in 1991
Much higher growth rate over 30 years for artists than all workers in the province
Today’s article examines the growth in the number of artists in Alberta between 1991 and 2021. The article is made possible with the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Hill Strategies Research retained editorial control of the content.
Significant behind-the-scenes data work
Over the course of 2024, I worked out comparable data on the number of artists from different census periods. More specifically, I scoured hundreds of datasets from five census years (1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2016) to find data that are comparable to my custom data request in 2021. I then downloaded those datasets, pinpointed the 10 artist occupations (out of about 700 occupational categories), copied the artist data into spreadsheets, and analyzed the results.
Here’s a brief list of what I needed to address, with further details at the end of this post:
Changes in our definition of “artists”.
Changes in Statistics Canada’s occupation classifications.
Slightly different definitions of who is counted as a worker (including artists) in different datasets.
Changes in census methods, particularly the outlier year of 2011.
There are some elements that I have not been able to address:
Demographic breakdowns, because of additional complications due to the relative lack of readily available, comparable census data.
Change in the number of cultural workers, because there have been significant changes in the 52 occupation groups that are included as cultural workers.
For those who are particularly curious, I’ve written about some of the census changes in more detail, especially here, here, and here. My post on Canada-wide changes in the number of artists is here.
78% increase in the number of artists in Alberta between 1991 and 2021
In Alberta, the 18,100 professional artists in 2021 is a 78% increase compared with the 10,200 artists in 1991. This increase is much higher than the 58% growth in the provincial labour force during the same 30-year period.
The increase in Alberta is one of the highest among the provinces and slightly above the 75% increase in the number of artists in Canada during the same timeframe.
The following graph shows that there has been an increase in the number of artists in Alberta in every five-year census period. Further details are available in the next section.
Note regarding 2011 data: Because of significant changes in methods of the (voluntary) National Household Survey in 2011, I am not considering the count of artists in that year to be comparable to other years. For graphing purposes, I have imputed estimates for 2011 as the midpoints between the 2006 and 2016 estimates.
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Provincial data are available for the full time period. At the local level, there are additional challenges, but I am able to work through some of them. Data for Census Metropolitan Areas are easier to find than for local municipalities, but I have found at least a couple of data points for larger municipalities.
Strong growth rates in most 5-year periods
As shown in the following graph, the rate of growth in the number of artists was highest during the first five-year census period (i.e., 21% growth between 1991 and 1996). This was followed by consistently strong growth rates of 9% or 10%. Growth was least strong during the most recent census period: a 3% increase between 2016 and 2021.
The final graph in today’s post shows that the growth in the number of artists greatly exceeded that of all workers in the first and the most recent five-year census periods. The growth in the number of artists was lower than the large increases in the overall labour force between 1996 and 2006. Between 2006 and 2016, the percentage change in the number of artists was a bit higher than that of all workers in the province.
Changes by artist occupation
While there have been changes in some job classifications since 1991, the definitions of seven out of ten artist groups have stayed the same. In four of these seven artist occupation groups, the number of artists more than doubled between 1991 and 2021. However, one artist occupation group saw a decrease during this period:
Dancers: 251% increase (from 410 in 1991 to 1,400 in 2021)
Painters, sculptors & other visual artists: 163% increase (from 800 to 2,100)
Photographers: 162% increase (from 1,000 to 2,600)
Producers, directors, choreographers & related occupations: 109% increase (from 880 to 1,800)
Conductors, composers & arrangers: 66% increase (from 150 to 240)
Musicians: 30% increase (from 3,000 to 3,900)
Artisans & craftspeople: 5% decrease (from 2,400 to 2,300)
The three artist occupation groups where an analysis of changes is not possible are: writers; actors, comedians, and circus performers; and the catch-all group of “other performers”.
Detailed notes
Here is further information about what I needed to address to ensure an “apples-to-apples” comparison of artists over time.
Changes in our definition of artists
In 2021, in consultation with readers, we decided to include photographers as an artist occupation. Photographers had not been included in my previous counts of artists or the data that I had requested in previous census years.
Periodic changes in Statistics Canada’s occupational classifications
For artists, almost all the classification changes have been between occupation groups that are both included as artists, rather than between artist and non-artist occupation groups. That is good! However, because of the changes, an analysis of trends is not possible for some artist occupations.
A new occupation group was created in 2021 for “technical writers”. The 900 Alberta workers in this occupation group were not counted as artists in 2021 but were included with other types of writers (an artist occupation group) in every other census year since 1991. To adjust for this, the counts of artists prior to 2021 have been reduced by 5%, which is the proportion of technical workers among all artists and technical writers in 2021.
Slightly different definitions of who is counted as a worker (including artists) in different datasets
This is a tricky challenge and one that even holds for a single census year. Some datasets exclude people who were out of the labour force in May but had worked at some point in the previous 16 months. Many other datasets only include those who were in the labour force at the time in May of each census year.
My analyses of 2021 census data have included all people classified into an occupation, even though some of them did not work in May of 2021.
I believe that this inclusion is particularly helpful when looking at the number of professional artists, because of the ebbs and flows of artistic work.
I had to find datasets from each census year based on the same type of count (called “universe” by Statistics Canada). This was one of the toughest challenges.
Changes to census methods
The 2011 census was an outlier year, because the equivalent of the long-form census (called the “National Household Survey”) was a voluntary survey of 30% of all households. In all other census periods, the long-form census was a mandatory survey that covered 20% of households from 1991 to 2006 and 25% of households in 2016 and 2021.
The response rate in 2011 was just 69%, compared with a typical response rate above 95% in other years. I do not believe that the 2011 data are comparable to other years – and, indeed, the 2011 data tend to be quite different from other census periods.
Because of the lack of comparable data for 2011, I have imputed data for that year as the midpoint between the estimates for 2006 and 2016. The percentage changes are therefore imprecise for 2006 to 2011 and 2011 to 2016 but do provide an accurate portrait of the changes during the broader timeframe (i.e., 2006 to 2016).
Here are some other important notes to keep in mind when considering the above analysis of artists in the workforce:
The analysis relates to professional workers, but with a very specific concept of professional. The census data on occupations include people who worked more hours as an artist than at any other occupation during the census week (always in early May), plus people who were not in the labour force at that time but had worked more as an artist than at another occupation after January 1 of the prior year (2020, in the case of the 2021 census). Part-time artists who spent more time at another occupation during the census period would be classified in the other occupation.
The atypical nature of artists’ workflows can make it challenging for official statistics to count artists as artists. As such, census estimates of the number of artists might be low. “Gig work” has been common among artists for a very long time. Internet sources even indicate that the term “gig” was coined by jazz musicians in the early 1900s. (Source examples here and here.)