CREATIVE ECONOMY EMPLOYMENT IN THE EU AND THE UK: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

A new report is published by NESTA today, written by Andy Pratt and colleagues Max Nathan and Ana Rincon-Aznar. This report is part of a larger Nesta project to compare the size, growth, and industrial and occupational structure of the UK’s creative economy with other countries. The creative economy is defined as employment in the creative industries, plus creative jobs that are embedded outside the creative industries in the wider economy.

The report makes two contributions. First, we compare the size and growth of the creative industries between 2011 and 2013 in the UK and in the European Union (EU) on a consistent basis. Second, we explore the structure of the creative economy across six large European economies (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and the UK) where the occupational data are sufficiently rich, by comparing the distributions of creative intensity across industries.

The headlines were that the UK is home to 20% of creative workers in EU. While the UK boasts 1 million more creative staff than France, it lags behind Sweden and Finland, prompting concerns over arts and design investment.

The report picked up plenty of coverage in the news, such as this one in The Guardian.

The report is significant in being the first attempt to of controlled comparative mapping of the creative economy across multiple countries. This first report concerns Europe, and further report- due out soon- covers North America. Download from the NESTA web site