Thursday, March 14, 2019
Arts Sector Contributed $763.6 Billion to U.S. Economy—More Than Agriculture or Transportation
Artsy: The arts and cultural sector contributed over $763.6 billion to the American economy in 2015—more than the agriculture, transportation, or warehousing sectors, according to new U.S. government data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
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I always find it so amazing that people claim to care about the economy and make decisions in relation to it yet many of them think art is a waste. I read an article a while back that talked about how arts contribute to one third of our economy and now for the 2015 stats, it is reading closer to half of our economy. Almost half of our economy has something to do with the arts and its everywhere. That smartphone you are holding was designed by someone, that is an art and an important one because many people quite literally wont buy something because it doesn’t look great. Advertising is an art, theatre, film, television, are arts. Business people should be the ones that appreciate the arts the most because without them their products and technology don’t get promoted and when they aren’t promoted or advertised, they lose money. There are stats about advertising that can be looked up that prove just that. The arts are great and without them things turn bad, our economy will literally decline rapidly, people without entertainment have proven throughout history to end empires, and it’s so incorporated in our lives today without notice that there will be a major shock once it is gone just because of how drastically change will be seen and all because it was unforeseen change. The arts are amazing and vital, and we should pay more attention to them.
I was surprised by these figures at first, how can the measly little arts industry make more than the transportation industry, than the food industry! The reason I was thinking this way is because food and transportation are major parts of life. The more I thought about it, it makes sense. Everywhere you go, everything you do has been influenced by the arts. I think back to the two hours of the the Big Bang Theory I watched on the plane the other day and 10 million per episode budget and how much American Airlines must spend creating and printing a copy of “sky way” for each seat on their aircrafts. Media literally surrounds our everyday lives just as much, if not more than agriculture and transportation. Part of me wants to show this article to my parents who are often skeptical about my future financial security in the arts industry.
This article, while a little dense and numbers-heavy, gets the point across: not only are the arts in demand, but they’re also profitable according to hard data. It’s no new phenomenon that the arts take much of the beating for budget cuts and reduced funding, but now there is concrete evidence explaining why-- beyond creatively enriching lives-- the arts should be taken seriously from an economic standpoint. It’s easy enough for those of us already working in and contributing to the industry to see that arts and cultural efforts are profitable, and I hope we’re going into a direction where non-arts folk get firsthand evidence of it as well. I’m no economics expert, but I can assume that the arts sector across the entire U.S. is underfunded, and yet, major arts institutions and independent artists alike have generated some groundbreaking work in the past decade. Imagine what the possibilities might be if we started taking these creators seriously enough to properly fund their aspirations and contributions to society.
I think that everyone needs to read this article, especially to the people who still see a starving artist in their brain when they think about the arts. Yes, many of us will not be making an extravagant amount of money but there is a way to make a living through the arts and here is a perfect statistical example of how. As the sector grows economy, hopefully, it will help legitimize the profession more as so many people think being an artist or working in the arts is a job for sell outs. This article is also a great read for anyone who thinks that there should be cuts to arts funding. Clearly, the arts are giving and serving the economy more than several other areas and there is a clear need to help grow our economy, which the arts sector can do. Lastly, this article made me wonder what is the biggest contributor to our economy. This article seems like it could be very biased because it only talks about what sectors add less than the arts sector to the economy without talking about things that also add a lot to the economy. Also, this might be my lack of economic knowledge but there is only .2 difference between arts sector growth and total economic growth and I wonder how significant that actually is.
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