CULTURAL SECTOR GROWTH AHEAD OF ECONOMY AS A WHOLE

Ottawa , Decem­ber 3, 2004 — Sta­tis­tics Canada yes­ter­day released new fig­ures on the eco­nomic con­tri­bu­tion of cul­ture — in Canada , from a provin­cial per­spec­tive, and in Ontario .   These were based on data from the annual Labour Force Sur­veys and cover the period 1996–2001 (ie: prior to the Tomor­row Starts Today funding).

CCA mem­bers will note that some of the sta­tis­tics do not accord with those recently released by the Cul­tural Human Resources Coun­cil ( Canada’s Cul­tural Sec­tor Labour Force by Hill Strate­gies Research Inc. and Cul­tural Sec­tor Fast Stats by T J Cheney Research Inc), due largely to dif­fer­ing def­i­n­i­tions of what counts as cul­ture and what does not.   StatsCan uses indus­try clas­si­fi­ca­tions from the recently released Cana­dian Frame­work for Cul­tural Sta­tis­tics (avail­able on the StatsCan web­site at www.statcan.ca ), while CHRC’s reports were based on data from the 2001 Census.

Accord­ing to Kelly Hill, of Hill Research Strate­gies Inc, “mul­ti­ple job-holding is com­mon among artists, mak­ing any sin­gle clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem tricky” .   The def­i­n­i­tion of cul­ture used by StatsCan is: “Cre­ative artis­tic activ­ity and the goods and ser­vices pro­duced by it, and the pre­sen­ta­tion of human heritage”.

Some high­lights from the reports:

•  Employ­ment in the sec­tor rose at an annual aver­age rate of 3.4% com­pared to 2.3% in the econ­omy as a whole.

•  611,000 indi­vid­u­als worked in the sec­tor; 4.1% of Canada ‘s work­force.

•  In 2001, total eco­nomic out­put from Canada ‘s cul­tural indus­try exceeded $38 bil­lion, up 32% from 1996 ($29.2 bil­lion).   This rep­re­sented 3.8% of GDP * (unchanged from 1996).

•  The major­ity of cul­ture work­ers (79%) were employed full time, com­pared to the national aver­age of 81%.   (NB: StatsCan fig­ures include those work­ing in her­itage, libraries and archives where the work­ers are over­whelm­ingly employees.)

•  Self-employment in the sec­tor stood at just over 25% com­pared to the national aver­age of 16%, and was high­est in Ontario .

•  Unem­ploy­ment in the sec­tor was 5.3%, well below the national aver­age of 8.1%.

*The Cana­dian gross domes­tic prod­uct or GDP is the value of all goods and ser­vices pro­duced in Canada in a cal­en­dar year. The gross domes­tic prod­uct includes only final goods and ser­vices, not goods and ser­vices used to make another prod­uct. Changes in the gross domes­tic prod­uct are an indi­ca­tion of eco­nomic out­put.   (Source: canadaonline.about.com .)

The report for Canada breaks down the sec­tor by per­cent­age share of cul­ture GDP and per­cent­age share of cul­ture employ­ment.   The three lead­ing indus­tries in both cat­e­gories were writ­ten media, broad­cast­ing, and film.   (It should be noted that news­pa­pers as well as books and peri­od­i­cals are included in the StatsCan fig­ures for writ­ten media, but news­pa­pers were not included as a cul­tural clas­si­fi­ca­tion in the CHRC studies.)

On a provin­cial basis, the sta­tis­tics indi­cate that Ontario was the lead­ing province for eco­nomic out­put and employ­ment, account­ing for 47% of the cul­ture GDP nation­ally, and 43% of total Cana­dian cul­tural employ­ment. Que­bec accounted for 23% of national cul­ture GDP , and British Colum­bia for 12%.   Cul­tural employ­ment increased in all provinces except New Brunswick and Nova Sco­tia .

The reports are avail­able at:

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/041202/d041202a.htm ( Canada ) http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/041202/d041202b.htm (provin­cial perspective)

http://www.statcan.ca:8096/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=81–595-MIE2004024 ( Ontario )