According to a  research report titled Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008 done by the National Endowment for the Arts, during the recent economic slowdown artists were unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers. Included among artists are performing artists, fine artists, art directors, and animators, writers and authors, and photographers . Here are a few highlights from the report.

• Artists are unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers, a category in which artists are grouped because of their high levels of education. The artist unemployment rate grew to 6.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with 3.0 percent for all professionals. A total of 129,000 artists were unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2008, an increase of 50,000 (63 percent) from one year earlier. The unemployment rate for artists is comparable to that for the overall workforce (6.1 percent).

• Artist unemployment rates would be even higher if not for the large number of artists leaving the workforce. The U.S. labor force grew by 800,000 people from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. In contrast, the artist workforce shrank by 74,000 workers. Some of this decline may be attributed to artists’ discouragement over job prospects.

• The job market for artists is unlikely to improve until long after the U.S. economy starts to recover. Unemployment is generally a lagging economic indicator, or a measure of how an economy has performed in the past few months. During the prior recession (2001), artist unemployment did not reach its peak of 6.1 percent until 2003 – two years after economic recovery began nationwide.
• Unemployment rose for most types of artist occupations. Artist jobs with higher unemployment rates are performing artists (8.4 percent), fine artists, art directors, and animators (7.1 percent), writers and authors (6.6 percent), and photographers (6.0 percent).

You can read the entire press release on the NEA website .  You can also downlod the entire report as a PDF

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