Racialized workers have particularly low incomes in the arts and culture
Racialized workers have particularly low incomes in the arts and culture
Analysis of the incomes of artists, arts leaders, and all cultural workers, including differences by gender
Two weeks ago, I showed that Black, Asian, and other racialized people are underrepresented among artists, arts leaders, and workers in a broad range of cultural occupations. In that brief post, I did not have the space for an analysis of incomes.
Today’s post analyses the median incomes of racialized and non-racialized men and women within four broad groupings of occupations: artists, arts leaders, workers in cultural occupations, and all Canadian workers.
The post examines income statistics for artists as a group, for arts leaders as a group, and for cultural occupations as a group – not for individual occupation categories (e.g., writers, actors, performing arts managers, etc.).
The income statistics from the 2021 census relate to 2020, a year with many pandemic lockdowns and slowdowns in artistic activity. Median personal income is highlighted, which includes all sources of income, including (for example) employment income and pandemic supports.
In this post, I use the term racialized to refer to what Statistics Canada has called the visible minority population. According to the Employment Equity Act, visible minority people include “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." National statistics indicate that the racialized population consists mainly of the following groups: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Arab, Latin American, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese.
As is often the case, this post is a high-level summary of the situation of racialized artists, arts leaders, and cultural workers. For example, the post examines all racialized workers, rather than exploring differences between Black, Asian, and other racialized workers. The post also highlights gender differences, but these are not explored in significant detail.
More data and deeper analysis are possible but, frankly, require more funding to do so. On that note, I want to state that I’m not happy to place a post on the incomes of equity seeking groups behind a paywall, but paid subscribers are my only source of funding for these reports. I have to provide value added for them.
Details about the occupation groups included in each of the broad categories are available at the end of this post, along with other notes regarding methods.
Please let me know if you are interested in a deeper profile of Black, Asian, or racialized artists, arts leaders, and/or all cultural workers. The sponsor / shareable level subscription ($750 including taxes) is one way that we could make a bit more analysis available for Canada, a specific province, or a municipality. There is also the option of an even deeper dive via a custom project that would cost more than $750.
Context: Racialized workers have lower incomes in general
Among all workers in the Canadian economy, as shown in the graph below, non-racialized men have by far the highest median personal incomes. Non-racialized women have much lower median incomes, and racialized men and women have even lower median incomes. Specifically:
Non-racialized men have a median income of $58,000.
Non racialized women have a median income of $47,200, 19% lower than non-racialized men.
Racialized men have a median income of $44,400, 23% lower than non-racialized men.
Racialized women have the lowest median income ($41,200, or 29% lower than non-racialized men).
The rest of this post examines median incomes among artists, arts leaders, and all workers in cultural occupations.