As the country has battled the Great Recession, we’ve been inundated with reports of corporate layoffs and manufacturing jobs vanishing. But there’s another group of American workers that has been particularly hard hit — the creative class.
In an ongoing series for Salon, reporter Scott Timberg writes that the last few years have seen a huge drop-off in jobs in the creative industries. He cites figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that show declines from 20 to 30 percent in photography, architecture, and graphic design since the recession began. In other fields, Timberg found, the downturn simply aggravated existing trends. “‘Theater, dance and other performing arts companies’ [are] down 21.9 percent over five years,” he writes. “Musical groups and artists plummeted by 45.3 percent between August 2002 and August of 2011.”
But the public — including the media and politicians — doesn’t have much sympathy, Timberg tells Kurt Andersen. Partly, it’s a problem of perception. Celebrity artists seem to be “doing fine … the Frank Gehrys, the Nicole Kidmans, the Drakes and so on.” Kurt suggests that since creative workplaces tend to be small, layoffs don’t generate the publicity of a large factory relocating to China. (via Recession Wanes, But Artists Still Starving - Studio 360)
