The Size and Growth of the Creative Economy

While specific output and employment figures vary by the definition of creative economy used, it is clear that the creative economy is larger than many people realize – and it’s growing:

• A study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggests that, globally, creative industries generate $2.25 trillion in revenue annually,¹ and creative industries employ 29.5 million people.²

• The United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization tout the creative economy as “one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy. It is also a highly transformative one in terms of income-generation, job creation and export earnings … World trade of creative goods and services totaled a record US$ 624 billion in 2011, more than doubling between 2002 and 2011. The average annual growth rate of the sector during that period was 8.8 percent, and the exports of creative goods was even stronger in developing countries, averaging 12.1 per cent annually over the same period.”³

• In the United States, according to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2014, the annual contribution of the creative economy was $730 billion or 4.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and, between 1998 and 2014, its contribution to GDP increased by 35 percent.⁴ The arts and culture sector is also a strong contributor to the US international trade surplus, contributing $26 billion between 1998 and 2014.⁵

• Americans for the Arts examined only businesses, including nonprofits, involved in the production or distribution of the arts, and determined 2.9 million people are employed in the creative economy.⁶
• The think tank Nesta looked at creative jobs and support jobs in the U.S. creative economy, and found a total of 14.3 million jobs.⁷
• The NEA’s Creative Placemaking report defined the creative economy through a set of industries that employ a high concentration of artists, and identified a workforce of 27 million people.⁸
• According to Richard Florida, under his broad definition of the creative economy, which includes law, business, and health care, there are more than 40 million creative class workers, equal to roughly one-third of the U.S. workforce.⁹