In all 10 provinces, the median wages of professionals in the arts, culture, and heritage are well below other professionals
But there are major differences between the provinces
Two weeks ago, I analyzed Canada-wide data on the median and average wages of employed workers in the arts, culture, and heritage. Today, I’ll present provincial data on the median wages of employed professional workers in the arts, culture, and heritage. I will compare these statistics with median wages for other types of professional workers in each province.
Statistics Canada’s grouping of “professional occupations in the arts and culture” comprises occupation groups where a majority of people have completed at least a bachelor’s degree, including:
Some artists, such as producers, directors, conductors, musicians, and writers.
Translators and other communications professionals
Librarians, archivists, conservators, and curators
Across Canada, there are about 90,000 employed workers in this occupation grouping.
The data source, the Labour Force Survey, doesn’t have a large enough sample size, even in its annual averages, to delve into occupation-by-occupation details. Hence the focus on readily available summary groupings (professional, technical, etc.).
The key finding of my analysis is that, in all 10 provinces, the median wages of employed professionals in the arts, culture, and heritage are well below employed professionals in other areas.
Because of the length of this article, I will analyze another summary grouping (“technical occupations in the arts and culture”) in a separate post. The technical grouping includes technical workers in the performing arts, film, broadcasting, libraries, and archives, plus graphic and interior designers.
A few particularly important notes about methods
For the provincial analysis, I decided to calculate a three-year average (i.e., average of 2022 to 2024). Why? Because of the significant year-to-year variations in some provincial wage statistics that are likely due to the relatively low sample sizes. These yearly variations are smoothed out with a three-year average. A nice bonus is that this technique allows me to provide estimates for all 10 provinces, despite one year of data being not reliable in some. But it means that the national wage estimates are different from my previous post.
Given the lack of precision in the estimates, I’ve decided to round off the median wage calculations to the nearest dollar.
Wage data from the Labour Force Survey exclude self-employed workers. Because artists have very high self-employment rates, many of them are excluded, along with other self-employed cultural workers.
Further information about the data source and methods is provided at the end of the post.