Arts and culture accounted for 4.3% of U.S. economy in 2012

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently issued a report that attempts to apply numbers and definition to the assumption that Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” has a direct and dynamic impact on the U.S. economy.

Florida, who is now director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, published his “Rise of the Creative Class” in 2004 that changed the way economists, community developers, government officials and many others viewed the potential for generational change within the workforce and economy. Florida’s belief was that about 40 million Americans “create” for a living, and how they work has the potential to change workplace norms, product and service marketing and success, municipal migration gains and losses, and a host of other factors related to overall economic performance.

According to a new report from the Commerce Department, the “nominal value” of production from all “arts and cultural production” industries increased $25.8 billion in 2012, with the total impact being $698.7 billion, or 4.3%, of total U.S. GDP.

“With the creation of new data analyses like this one – which shows how arts and culture contribute to GDP – the Department of Commerce is providing a more detailed picture of what drives the U.S. economy, growth, and job creation,” Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said in the statement. “Making new data available is another example of how the government is working harder and smarter to produce relevant statistics that better inform individuals, businesses, and decision-makers.”

The department also offered the following as a definition for cultural production: “Culture can be defined in a variety of ways to include: language, traditions, beliefs and values. For this account, we defined arts and cultural production narrowly to include creative artistic activity; the goods and services produced by it; the goods and services produced in the support of it; and finally the construction of buildings in which it is taking place.”

Job sectors placed in the arts and cultural production report include museum employees, landscape architects, advertising industry employees, performing artists, artist managers, sound recording, musical instrument manufacturers, publishers and graphic design workers.

Commodity output for all jobs in the sector totaled $1.1 trillion in 2012. The primary contributor to the core jobs in arts and culture was advertising with an output of $239.8 billion, and the primary contributor to the supporting jobs was broadcasting with an output of $118.4 billion.

Employment for all ACPSA industries was 4.7 million jobs in 2012.  The core ACPSA industries contributed 956,400 jobs, while the supporting ACPSA industries contributed 3.537 million jobs. The core job count is down from 1.062 million in 2007, but better than the 943,800 in 2011.

The supporting jobs are down from 3.921 million in 2007, and down slightly from 3.554 million in 2011.

The advertising industry was the primary contributor to the core employment, with 133.5 thousand jobs.  The primary contributor to supporting industries was the government sector, with 1.1 million jobs.

Following are the top five jobs in 2012 (by employment) in the core and supporting categories of arts and cultural production.

CORE
Advertising
2012: 133,500
2007: 140,000

Museums
2012: 122,300
2007: 117,400

Architectural services
2012: 102,300
2007: 144,500

Performing arts
2012: 100,100
2007: 108,600

Education services
2012: 93,300
2007: 94,600

SUPPORT
Government
2012: 1.113 million
2007: 1.178 million

Retail industries
2012: 713,800
2007: 759,000

Broadcasting
2012: 401,300
2007: 430,200

Motion pictures
2012: 367,300
2007: 364,200

Publishing
2012: 345,300
2007: 419,500

Link here for the complete report.