Overview

This site presents key findings from an analysis of cultural and creative employment in Australia drawing on custom tables of employment data from the Census of Australia Population and Housing (2021).

The analysis uses the ‘creative trident approach’ – an innovative methodology for measuring the scale and make-up of the creative economy, and which considers:

a) creatives working in the creative industries
b) creatives working in non-creative industries, and
c) non-creative workers employed in the creative industries.

Throughout this work, creative sectors are grouped by:

– the mostly business-to-business creative services sectors, such as 1) advertising and marketing, 2) architecture and design, 3) software and digital content, and

– the mostly business-to-consumer cultural production sectors, such as 4) film, TV and radio, 5) music and performing arts, 6) publishing and 7) visual arts.

The work was conducted through a partnership with the University of Canberra, Creative Australia, the City of Sydney, the South Australian Government’s Department for Industry, Innovation and Science and the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.    

For more information, see Cunningham, S. and McCutcheon, M. 2022, The Creative Economy in Australia: What Census 2021 Tells Us, Briefing paper 1 and Briefing paper 2: Embedded creative employment and creative incomes.