In 2024, Pennsylvania Creative Industries, powered by Pennsylvania Council on the Arts funded a study, entitled “Understanding Pennsylvania’s Creative Workforce.” The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, with support from Penn Praxis. The study, released in 2025, combines economic data analysis, surveys, and interviews with creative workers.
WHO ARE PENNSYLVANIA’S CREATIVE WORKERS?
Creative workers apply creative artistic and technical abilities to their work. Examples include craftspeople, musicians, arts educators, designers, and film technicians—nearly forty different occupations.
Roughly 245,000 Pennsylvanians work in creative jobs—one of the largest creative workforces nation-wide. This is 4.2% of the labor force over 25 years old. Creative work is concentrated in major metro areas, but widespread and growing in smaller cities.
Creatives work in almost fifty different Pennsylvania industries, including those not traditionally considered “creative” like healthcare, manufacturing, and education. Non-profits are notably important employers of creative workers. Pennsylvania lags behind some peer states in creative workforce density and average earnings.
WHAT DID WE LEARN ABOUT THE CREATIVES OF PENNSYLVANIA?
Creative workers are enthusiastic about their work. Most are satisfied with support for their career development and access to materials, markets, and work space. Creative work can be precarious. Workers report challenges related to financial stability, access to capital, and personal well-being.
Compensation and workforce participation varies between groups and professions. Design, administrative, and technical jobs pay more than those in arts,music, and performance. Men are better compensated than women. Up to 45% of creative workers are self-employed—blending roles like artist, educator, and entrepreneur. Roughly 60% of full-time, self-employed workers earned under $40K last year. Approximately 20% of creative workers have considered leaving Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s creative workforce required some novel methods of research and data analysis. Dr. Jamaal Green, assistant professor of city and regional planning at the Weitzman School, studied Public Use Microdata Sample data from the US Census Bureau, compiled by a group of researchers at the University of Minnesota for public research. The data, which includes individual and household-level occupational information from the American Community Survey, was aligned with 65 “creative industries” identified in consultation with the PA Council on the Arts. Green, who teaches courses on economic development and GIS modeling, says he was struck by the level of stratification in the creative workforce and the precarity of so many of its workers. Self-employment comes with unique challenges, like navigating an unstable gig economy and paying for health benefits and other needs out of pocket.
“Artists are often self-employed. While that type of entrepreneurialism is often celebrated, and the work they tend to do is very socially and culturally valuable, it’s not as valued in the broader market,” Green says. “I hope [the report] shows that cultural workers are everywhere within the broader economy of the state. They’re part of the larger social and cultural infrastructure of our state that makes it more vibrant and frankly a better and more human place.”
Above: Self Employed vs Non-self Employeed workers in Pennsylvania Source: PennPraxis
Researchers, including Dyan Castro, a project manager at PennPraxis, also conducted surveys and interviews with individual creative workers to better understand their priorities and concerns.
The surveys and interviews reflected the multifarious nature of creative work, with workers not acting just as artists or designers but also as marketers, accountants, and other business-related roles. The dynamics resonated with Castro, an architectural and landscape designer, and other members of the research team who also pursue their own creative projects.