Main findings from Don’t Give Up Your Day Job - "Artists incomes—low and intermittent"

Main findings from Don’t Give Up Your Day Job

An economic study of professional artists in Australia

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Artists—who are they?

·    There are about 45,000 practicing professional artists in Australia.

·    The term ‘practicing professional artists’ includes artists who are currently active or who have been active in the past five years; the ‘professional’ aspect limits the survey to those artists who operate at a level and standard of work and with a degree of commitment appropriate to the norms of professional practice within their artform. This excludes hobbyists and amateurs.

·    The biggest group is musicians with about 12,000; the second largest group, with about 9,000, is visual artists. Dancers make up the smallest group, with less than 1,500.

·    This survey covers the following categories of practicing professional artists: writers, visual artists, craft practitioners, actors, directors, dancers, choreographers, musicians, singers, composers, and community cultural development workers.

Artists incomes—low and intermittent

·    The survey income figures are for the 2000–01 financial year and are earned income excluding interest and dividends, etc. The figures show gross income before taxes.

·    Typically, artists have multiple job-holding patterns. An artist works in a ‘principal artistic occupation’ which can include rehearsal, practice, preparation and career administration.

·    Many artists have ‘arts-related’ work including teaching in the artist’s artform or writing about the arts. Many also have ‘non-arts’ work which includes paid work unrelated to any artistic field.

·    Artists were asked about their earned income for the 2000–01 financial year. Since most artists earn low incomes and a very few earn high incomes, the income statistics presented in the report concentrate on median income. This is the income in a distribution which is the half-way point, so that half earn above the median income and half earn below that figure.

·     Half of the artists in the survey had a creative income of less than $7,300 in the 2000–01 financial year. (The unusual distribution of artists creative incomes with many low incomes and few high incomes resulted in a mean creative income of just over $17,000.)

·    Total median incomes (‘arts incomes’ plus ‘non-arts incomes’) in 2000–01 ranged from $35,800 for musicians to $22,600 for both craft practitioners and community cultural development workers. The median income in 2000–01 for all artists in the survey was $30,000.

·    Only about a quarter of all artists work at their principal artistic occupation as employees on a permanent or casual basis being paid a salary or wages. The remaining three-quarters work as freelancers or as self-employed.

·    Female artists earn considerably less than male artists. The median ‘creative income’ of male artists in 2000–01 was $9,400 compared with $4,500 for female artists. Median total income (all ‘arts work’ plus “non-arts work’) for men was $35,000 and for women it was $23,600.

·     About half of the artists in the survey had experienced some period of unemployment in the five years preceding the survey, and half of those had applied for unemployment relief.