Abstract
For nearly 40 years, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has studied a cohort of 11 artist occupations, resulting in periodic research findings about artists’ employment and earnings, their demographics and geographic distribution, and how artists differ from other segments of the workforce. These reports have provided cultural researchers, practitioners, and policy makers with reliable descriptive statistics. In recent years, however, the NEA has expanded such research to capture the impact of artists on the nation’s creative and economic output and to account for a broader range of arts workers. This article reviews progress and makes recommendations for future study.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.National Endowment for the Arts. (1976). Employment and unemployment of artists . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/reports/NEA-Research-Report-1.pdf .
2.National Endowment for the Arts. (2008). Artists in the workforce: 2000 to 2005. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/ArtistsInWorkforce.pdf .
3.National Endowment for the Arts. (2009). We know art works: Rocco Landesman addresses grantmakers in the arts . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://artworks.arts.gov/?p = 13 .
4.National Endowment for the Arts. (2010a). Artist unemployment rates for 2008 and 2009: An addendum to research note #97 . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/research.php?type=N- .
5.National Endowment for the Arts. (2010b). Art works for America: Strategic plan for FY 2012–2016 . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/about/Budget/NEAStrategicPlan2012-2016.pdf .
6.National Endowment for the Arts. (2011a). Artist employment projections through 2018 . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/Notes/103.pdf .
7.National Endowment for the Arts. (2011b). Artists and arts workers in the United States . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/Notes/105.pdf .
8.National Endowment for the Arts. (2011c). National endowment for the arts cultural workforce forum: Summary of proceedings . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/Workforce-Forum/Cultural-Workforce-Forum-Report.pdf .
9.National Endowment for the Arts. (2012). How art works: The national endowment for the arts’ five-year research agenda, with a system map and measurement model . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/How-Art-Works/ .
10.National Endowment for the Arts. (2013). Equal opportunity data mining: National statistics about working artists . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.nea.gov/research/EEO/index.html .
11.Pellegrino, J., & Hilton, M. (Eds.). (2012). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13398 .
12.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2010). Quarterly census of employment and wages . Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/cew/ .