Statistical insights on the arts

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Incomes by gender of artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers

statsinsights.hillstrategies.com
Census 2021

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

Jul 18, 2023
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Incomes by gender of artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers

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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.

Interested in a profile of artists in your municipality or province? Subscribe now at the sponsor / shareable level (just $750) to get a custom post with many important breakdowns (occupation, gender, education, age, racialized individuals, Indigenous Peoples). Bonus: you’ll receive access to every other subscribers-only post for the next 12 months.

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.

Bar graph of Median personal incomes of all Canadian workers by gender, 2021 census.  Transgender people: $36400.  Non-binary people: $31400.  Cisgender women: $45600.  Cisgender men: $54400.  Note: Personal incomes include all sources for an individual during the 2020 calendar year. Source: 2021 census, custom data request by Hill Strategies.

The rest of this post examines median incomes in the arts and culture.

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