Local arts and culture workforce trends (part 3)

Seven smaller CMAs

Based on readily available occupation statistics from the Labour Force Survey

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

This post, the final in a series of three, examines seven smaller CMAs: St. Catharines-Niagara, Windsor, Victoria. Saskatoon, Regina, Sherbrooke, and St. John’s.

For comparison purposes, I’ll include an analysis of the Canada-wide average.

For detailed methodological notes, see my post from two weeks ago on the 6 CMAs with populations over 1 million. Last week, I analyzed 6 CMAs with populations under 1 million: Halifax, Hamilton, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, Quebec City, and Winnipeg.

Key things to keep in mind

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

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.

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?

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 seven CMAs in this post, the increases were largest in Saskatoon and Victoria.

Pan-Canadian trend

In Canada, the number 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 the estimates for 2016 through 2019.

Details for each of the seven CMAs follow.