More than twice as many artists in British Columbia in 2021 as in 1991
The growth rate has been much higher for artists than all B.C. workers
Today’s article provides a careful comparison of statistics on artists in British Columbia from census years from 1991 to 2021. The article is made possible with the support of British Columbia’s Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture, and Sport. Hill Strategies Research retained editorial control of the content.
The fruit of significant behind-the-scenes data work
Over many days in 2024, I have worked out comparable data on the number of artists from different census periods. 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.
The number of artists in B.C. more than doubled between 1991 and 2021
In 2021, there were 39,700 professional artists in the province, compared with 18,600 in 1991. This is a 114% increase in the number of professional artists in the province over a 30-year timeframe, which is much higher than the 51% growth in the overall labour force.
The increase in B.C. is the highest among the provinces and well above the 75% increase in the number of artists in Canada during the same timeframe.
The following graph demonstrates the consistent growth in the number of artists in B.C.
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.
Sponsors and potential sponsors: Are you interested in a similar article for your jurisdiction? 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.
If you are not yet a sponsor but are interested in an historical analysis, please sign up below and choose the “Sponsor-shareable” option. I’ll be in touch when I get the notification of the sign-up.
Large increases in the number of artists in British Columbia throughout the 30-year timeframe
The data in the following graph indicate that the growth rate in the number of artists has been strong in each five-year period between 1991 and 2021, but the largest increases came at the beginning of the historical data (24% between 1991 and 1996 and 20% between 1996 and 2001). Since 2001, the five-year growth rates have hovered around 10%.
The final graph in today’s post shows that the growth in the number of artists has exceeded that of all workers in every five-year period. The difference between artists and the overall labour force is most striking in the first two five-year periods (1991 to 1996 and 1996 to 2001).
Changes by artist occupation
While there have been periodic changes in Statistics Canada’s occupational classifications since 1991, seven of the ten artist occupation groups have not been amended over this timeframe. There have been very different rates of change in the number of artists in the seven occupation groups with comparable data in 1991 and 2021:
Producers, directors, choreographers & related occupations: 329% increase (from 1,500 in 1991 to 6,500 in 2021)
Photographers: 200% increase (from 1,300 to 3,900)
Conductors, composers & arrangers: 155% increase (from 260 to 650)
Dancers: 125% increase (from 820 to 1,800)
Painters, sculptors & other visual artists: 86% increase (from 2,300 to 4,300)
Musicians: 46% increase (from 4,800 to 7,000)
Artisans & craftspeople: 8% decrease (from 4,400 to 4,000)
The three artist occupation groups where an analysis of changes is not possible are: writers; actors and comedians; 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 you, 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 1,300 B.C. 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 3%, 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.)