Severe affordability challenges for cultural workers in Canada
Severe affordability challenges for cultural workers in Canada
And many other insights into their working conditions
Human resources are a very important issue in many sectors of Canadian society, and culture is no different. The current environment provides many significant opportunities and challenges for people who work in the arts, culture, and heritage. However, relatively little is known about the state of cultural human resources in Canada, beyond macro-level statistics from the census and other sources, or anecdotal information about specific people or organizations in the sector.
Sensing a need for more information, the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) commissioned Hill Strategies Research to conduct a survey of affordability and working conditions in the careers of artists and other cultural workers. The survey received 1,170 responses between February 14 and March 6, 2024, including 468 responses from non-artist cultural workers. This summary focuses on the key findings from cultural workers, while a separate report analyzed the responses from artists.
More than eight in ten of the non-artist cultural workers who responded to the survey have an employment position (83%), including 58% who have a permanent position and 15% who have a contract position. Most of the cultural workers who have an employment position work for a not-for-profit organization, whether a registered charity (52%) or not (27%).
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Severe affordability challenges
One key finding of the survey is that many cultural workers are facing severe affordability challenges. Indeed, most are financially stressed and dissatisfied with the affordability of their homes. For both indicators, the situation of cultural workers is much worse than other Canadians, as shown in the following graph.
When asked about their incomes from arts and culture sources, most cultural workers (55%) indicated that they earned less than $60,000 in 2023. At the high end of earnings, 11% of respondents earned at least $100,000. It is slightly more common for cultural workers to make less than $20,000 than more than $100,000. Details are provided in the next graph.
Two-thirds of cultural workers (64%) believe their rate of pay in their principal occupation in the arts and culture to be low. One-third (32%) believe their rate of pay to be adequate, and only 4% say that it is generous. Over two-thirds of responding cultural workers (69%) indicated that their arts and culture income typically represents all their personal income.
Given their financial challenges, 81% of Canada’s cultural workers took some type of action in 2023 to try to make ends meet, including cutting back on expenses, drawing down savings or investments, receiving financial help from another member of the household, having another source of income, and taking on additional debt.
The full report provides a demographic analysis of key financial indicators. The analysis indicates that financial challenges are particularly acute for cultural workers who are D/deaf and/or disabled, IBPOC, LGBTQ2SIA+, gender diverse, women, or young.
Meaningful work with many challenges
The vast majority of employed cultural workers believe that the work that they do in their organization is meaningful (87% of respondents agreed with this statement). However, exactly one-half of employed cultural workers indicated that they feel burned out in their organization.
Unpaid work is a very common practice in the arts, culture, and heritage. Most cultural workers with an employment position (69%) reported doing extra unpaid work, including 30% who do extra work “very often”, as shown in the following graph.
Regarding their mental health, 44% of cultural workers are satisfied, and 33% are dissatisfied.
When cultural workers were asked to select from a list of challenges faced in their careers, two choices were most common: a lack of understanding of the type of work that they do and the work of “gatekeepers” in the sector.
Most responding cultural workers (63%) said that they have experienced systemic barriers during their careers. Ageism and sexism are most common (each selected by one-third of cultural workers). Other workers have faced systemic barriers related to class, race, language, mental ability or disability, sexual orientation, and physical ability or disability.
Positive experiences, but uncertainty about doing it all over again
Early career experiences are important for many cultural workers. Among ten potentially helpful career experiences, about two-thirds of cultural workers selected a specific gig or job early in their careers (63%), and about one-half also selected support from other cultural workers (52%).
The risk of attrition in the cultural sector is high: one-third of responding cultural workers very seriously considered leaving the sector in 2023 (33%), and some respondents actually did leave (3%).
When asked whether they would choose roughly the same path if they had the chance to start their careers over again, many cultural workers are undecided, with the largest contingent (35%) responding “Not sure. Maybe.” Only 13% would definitely choose the same path, and another 28% would probably do so. Many cultural workers would probably not (19%) or definitely not (5%) choose the same path again.
Despite all these challenges, most cultural workers (70%) expressed satisfaction with their principal occupation in the arts and culture, including 31% who said that they are “very satisfied”.