Too Many Artists!

nik.mercer — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:44:19 -0700

The New York Times wrote about a new National Endowment for the Arts (N.E.A.) study today, and we're having a tough time making sense of it.

Let's start with the tag line:

More Americans identify their primary occupation as artist than as lawyer, doctor, police officer or farm worker.

Wait, what!? Apparently, two million Americans reported that their primary employment was in artists' occupations. Granted, in U.S. census lingo, "artist" is a loose term that broadly refers to not only the folks putting paint to canvas or getting paid to use PhotoShop, but also architects, interior designers, window dressers, and other service-/trade-oriented "art" professions.

Now let's look at some more specific numbers: there are currently 185,000 writers, 170,000 musicians and singers, nearly 150,000 photographers, nearly 40,000 actors and 25,000 dancers. Holy smokes! New York is home to the most artists (California follows in a close second, then Massachusetts, then Vermont, and finally Colorado in fifth place―California's got the most actors, though!) Furthermore, the number of people in the above mentioned fields has only increased since 1990 (save for animators, fine artists, art directors and animators, and announcers.) Totally bizarre, right? Any theories on this? It can't all just be the work of this devilish Internet... right?