Relatively low incomes for artists and other cultural workers who are immigrants to Canada
Analysis of the incomes of artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers, including differences between racialized and non-racialized workers
Today’s post analyses the median incomes of immigrant Canadians within four broad groupings of occupations: artists, arts leaders, workers in cultural occupations, and all workers in the country. The post is intended as a high-level summary of the situation of immigrant artists, arts leaders, and cultural workers, including differences between racialized and non-racialized immigrants (but not other differences within the diversity of immigrants in Canada).
Income statistics are examined for artists as a group, arts leaders as a group, and all cultural workers as a group – not for individual occupation categories (e.g., craftspeople, actors, curators, arts managers, etc.). The income statistics from the 2021 census relate to 2020, a year with many pandemic lockdowns and slowdowns in artistic activity. For clarity, I focus on one income statistic: median personal income, which includes all sources of income, including (for example) employment income and pandemic supports. Other notes regarding methods are provided at the end of this post.
Last week, I noted that that the representation of immigrant Canadians is lower among arts leaders (18%) and artists (21%) than among cultural workers (23%) and all workers (25%).
Next week, I’ll analyze provincial statistics on immigrant workers in the arts, culture, and heritage.
Context: immigrant workers have lower incomes in the overall labour force
Among all Canadian workers, immigrants have a median income ($48,000) that is 6% lower than non-immigrants ($51,200).
In these income statistics, whether someone is racialized appears to play a stronger role than whether someone is an immigrant. The following graph shows that immigrant workers have similar incomes to non-immigrants, when examined in conjunction with racialization:
Non-racialized non-immigrant workers have a median income of $52,000.
Non-racialized immigrant workers have a median income of $52,400, similar to non-racialized non-immigrant workers.
Racialized non-immigrant workers have a median income of $39,200, 25% lower than non-racialized non-immigrant workers.
Racialized immigrant workers have a median income of $42,800, 18% lower than non-racialized non-immigrant workers (but slightly higher than racialized non-immigrant workers).
Analysis of artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers
The remainder of this post analyses the median incomes of immigrant and non-immigrant artists, arts leaders, and workers in cultural occupations, with comparisons between racialized and non-racialized people in these positions.