Local arts and culture workforce trends (part 2)

Six CMAs with populations under 1 million

Based on readily available occupation statistics from the Labour Force Survey

Today’s post continues my analysis of the number of artists and (select) cultural workers in Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) between 2006 and 2021.

Six CMAs with populations under 1 million are included today: Quebec City, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, and Halifax. For comparison purposes, I’ll include an analysis of the Canada-wide average.

Next week’s post, the final in this series, will examine seven smaller CMAs: Regina, Saskatoon, St. Catharines-Niagara, Sherbrooke, St. John’s, Victoria, and Windsor.

For detailed methodological notes, see last week’s post on the 6 CMAs with populations over 1 million. Here are some key things to keep in mind.

Subset of “artists and cultural workers”

The summary categorizations in the dataset include “occupations in art, culture, recreation, and sport”. 28 of the 33 occupations in this summary categorization are cultural workers, including all 9 arts occupations. Based on 2016 census data for Canada, cultural workers account for 72% of all workers in this grouping, including the 28% represented by artists.

Focus on broad trends

Given the Labour Force Survey’s limitations, the analysis that follows is relatively simple: has the number of artists and cultural workers (in the key occupation grouping) increased or decreased? What hints can we glean about pandemic-era trends from recent data?

The estimates in the graphs are in the thousands of workers, but the estimates for any given year are less interesting than the overall trends, due to the unusual grouping of occupations.

Trends for the 19 CMAs as a group

Between 2006 and 2021:

• 17 of the 19 CMAs saw an increase in the number of artists and select cultural workers.

• The increase in the 19 CMAs was well above the Canadian average. The median increase was 22% in the 19 CMAs, compared with an overall increase of 8% in Canada.

Among the six CMAs in this post, the increase was largest in Halifax, Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, and Hamilton.

Pan-Canadian trend

The first graph shows that the number of workers in the grouping of artists and select cultural workers increased between 2006 and 2019 but decreased significantly in 2020. There was an increase in 2021, but that year’s estimate remained below those for 2016 through 2019.

Details for each of the six CMAs follow.