Part 2: Local trends in the arts, culture, and heritage workforce between 2013 and 2025
7 CMAs with populations between 500,000 and 1 million
Today, as part of my series of articles analyzing local statistics on workers in arts, culture, heritage, and some sport occupations, I examine individual and group changes between 2013 and 2025 for 7 CMAs with populations between 500,000 and 1,000,000: Winnipeg, Quebec City, Hamilton, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, Halifax, and St. Catharines-Niagara. For comparison purposes, I’ll include an analysis of the Canada-wide change between 2013 and 2025.
Last week, I examined the trends for Canada, the 31 CMAs (as a group), and the 6 largest CMAs: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, and Vancouver.
In upcoming articles, I’ll analyze smaller CMAs: 1) the 10 CMAs with populations between 220,000 and 500,000; and 2) the 8 CMAs with populations under 200,000. The 18 CMAs to come in future articles are: Abbotsford-Mission, Barrie, Fredericton, Greater Sudbury, Guelph, Kelowna, Kingston, Moncton, Oshawa, Peterborough, Regina, Saint John, Saskatoon, Sherbrooke, St. John’s, Trois-Rivières, Victoria, and Windsor.
These articles are based on publicly available occupation statistics from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). As was the case last week, I have created three-year averages to provide a higher level of statistical reliability and minimize the impact of unusual single year estimates in many CMAs. The data in this article labelled 2025 therefore represent the average for 2023-2025. The earliest data point (labelled 2013) is actually the average for 2011-2013. This technique is similar to what I did in my recent analysis of multiple job holding by province.
Key things to know about the Labour Force Survey
In my opinion, data from the Labour Force Survey are useful but imperfect for analyzing the labour force in the arts, culture, and heritage. I outline many limitations at the end of this article and in even greater detail here.
Because of its relatively small sample size, the Labour Force Survey can only offer reliable local data for a broad category of arts, culture, heritage, and sports workers. The summary data relate to what Statistics Canada calls “occupations in the arts, culture, recreation, and sports, except management”. I will generally call this occupation category “arts, culture, heritage, and sport workers”. Details about the occupation groupings within this category are at the end of this article.
Most of the people in this category (roughly 75%) work in the arts, culture, and heritage (rather than sports and recreation). The category covers approximately 60% of all workers in the arts, culture, and heritage.
The data are available for CMAs, not for municipalities per se.
Given the Labour Force Survey’s limitations, the analysis that follows is relatively simple: I examine whether the number of workers in the selected occupation grouping has increased or decreased over 12 years or so.
Reminder of Canada-wide data
There has been a relatively consistent increase in the number of workers in the arts, culture, heritage, and sport in Canada, resulting in a 26% increase between 2013 (estimate of 510,000) and 2025 (641,000). The exception to the increases was between 2020 and 2022, but there has been a solid increase since 2022.
7 CMAs with populations between 500,000 and 1 million
5.1 million people, or 12% of Canada’s population, reside in the 7 CMAs analyzed in today’s article.
12% of all Canadian workers in the arts, culture, heritage, and sport (79,000 people) reside in these 7 CMAs, a percentage that is equal to the CMAs’ share of the population.
Between 2013 and 2025, the 30% increase in number of workers in the arts, culture, heritage, and sport in the 7 CMAs is slightly above to the Canadian average (26%). Most of the increase has occurred since 2022, as shown in the following graph. Collectively, in the 7 CMAs, there were 60,000 workers in this occupation grouping in 2013, 61,000 in 2022, and 79,000 in 2025.
All 7 CMAs saw increases in the number of workers in the arts, culture, heritage, and sport. Only 2 had increases that were below the national average (26%).
Details follow for each of the 7 CMAs, from largest to smallest.