The recently released Otis College Report on the Creative Economy for 2024 reaffirms how important the “creative economy” is to California, where it is responsible for more than 760,000 jobs, accounting for one in five creative jobs in the US. The annual report looks at the prior year in what is broadly defined as the creative economy—a category that includes fields like film and television, toy design, music, fashion, architecture, theatre, dance, art schools, museums and galleries.
“California continues to be the national leader with respect to the creative economy,” said Taner Osman, a founder of Westwood Economics and Planning Associates (which produces the report for Otis College of Art and Design), at the report’s unveiling last week in Santa Monica.
According to the report, in Los Angeles alone the film, television and sound sector added around 15,000 jobs last year—while still recovering from two major union strikes in 2023. However, other sectors lost jobs, partly due to the continuing decline in manufacturing and shifts in market needs, producing an overall contraction of 0.9% in the creative economy. (Osman pointed out that the figure is close to the national figure of a 0.8% contraction.)
While the fine arts—which the report defines as all visual and performing arts—make up a small part of the report, it is one that has been growing. “The fine arts continue to shine as California remains a fine arts education powerhouse,” Osman observed as one of his five key findings. He later told The Art Newspaper that he credits this achievement to the strength and popularity of the many art colleges in Southern California. According to the report, California confers more fine arts degrees than any other state in the US. (California is also the most populous state in the country.)
In the past five years, 5,589 jobs were added at fine arts schools, with a robust 1,208 jobs added in 2024 alone. During the same period, museums saw an overall drop of 37 jobs but an addition of 279 last year—a significant rebound from the layoffs and furloughs of the Covid-19 years. Sadly, the number of people working as "art dealers" continues to decline, with 273 jobs lost over the five-year period and 115 in 2024.
While Los Angeles often appears to have a boom in contemporary art sales and dealers, events like Frieze Los Angeles and the Felix Art Fair do not necessarily create full-time jobs. Smaller galleries and those with headquarters elsewhere—such as Gavlak, based in Palm Beach, Florida—have quietly closed their Los Angeles branches.
All the while, as discussed in a panel discussion after the formal presentation in Santa Monica, the price of real estate in Los Angeles has been on the rise, creating difficulties for individuals as well as for businesses and nonprofits. Last year, it was widely reported that people were moving out of Los Angeles—this despite the fact that those in the creative economy are said to be making an average of $191,000 per year, according to the Otis College report. Of course, the high average is greatly skewed by those earning megabucks at the top.