SAA Summary: Statistics Canada’s quarterly report for national culture & sport indicators
At the beginning of January, The Daily, the media outlet for Statistics Canada released their quarterly report for national culture & sport indicators. This report documents recent changes in GDP & jobs in the culture & sport industries. As The Daily reports on both culture & sport as a single unit, the SAA has prepared this brief summary to review the arts & culture information in more detail.
As reported by The Daily, the GDP of combined culture and sport sectors fell in the third quarter of 2023 by 1.3%. Jobs in sport increased by 1.3% while culture jobs were down 1.5.% from Q2. Culture GDP in Q3 was $15.9m while sport GDP was $1.8m, and culture currently supports 702,842 jobs compared to sport’s 109,670.
Although culture GDP is down from the reported $16m of Q2, it is only slightly below the Q1 numbers ($15,947,274 in Q3 vs $15,984,101 in Q1) and remains higher than all quarters of 2022.
Looking more closely at the arts, while there are some minor fluctuations between Q2 and Q3 (Live Performance showed a 0.6% increase in the third quarter, Visual & Applied Arts showed a 0.8% decrease) all sub-domains of the arts, with the exception of Audio-Visual & Interactive Media, are showing increases in GDP over 2022 numbers.
Overall, culture jobs are at the lowest since Q2 2022, showing an overall 1.5% decrease from Q3 2022. Some sectors are showing increases, however: Live Performance (3.4%,) Visual & Applied Arts (0.5%,) Education & Training (3.4%) and Governance, Funding & Professional Support (5%) are all showing increases in jobs since Q3 2022, with Live Performance (0.9%,) Education & Training (0.4%) and Governance, Funding & Professional Support (2.5%) showing an increase from Q2 2023.
Although there were some fluctuations in the past couple years, Written & Published Works are showing the lowest number of jobs in Q3 since Q3 2021, with a decrease of 1% since Q2 2023 and a 2.5% decrease since the peak in Q3 2022. At the same time, Audio-Visual & Interactive Media are showing the lowest number of jobs since Q2 2021, with a decrease of 6.8% from Q2 2023, 10.9% since Q3 2022 and 11.7% from the peak of Q4 2022.
Across the board, most of culture has seen an increase in jobs from 2019, pre-pandemic numbers. Overall cultures jobs have increased 6.2% from Q3 2019. There are a few areas in which jobs have decreased since Q3 2019: under the umbrella of Visual & Applied Arts, jobs in Original Visual Art has seen a 6.3% decrease while Art Reproductions has decreased by 5.7%; Written & Published Works has decreased 10.8% with particular changes in Periodicals (1.7%) and Newspapers (15.6%;) Broadcasting, which falls under Audio-Visual & Interactive Media has seen a 5.3% decrease in the number of jobs.
When looking at the GDP, at constant 2012 prices, culture has grown 3.6%. The majority of sub-domains have also seen an increase in their GDP, with a few exceptions: Live Performance has seen a 0.4% decrease with Festivals & Celebrations seeing a 3.4% decrease; while Visual & Applied Arts overall has increased (5.2%,) Original Visual Arts’ GDP has decreased 3%, Art Reproductions has decreased 5.2% and Craft has seen a 8.4% decrease; under Audio-Visual & Interactive Media, Broadcasting has seen a 6.3% decline.
As already noted above, Written & Published Work has been on the decline. Since Q3 2019, Written & Published Work has seen a 15.5% decrease in GDP, with decreases in Other Published Works (1.2%) and Multi-Sub Domain (25.2%) the individual areas with decreases.
Overall, the majority of arts & culture domains have higher GDP and more jobs than in Q3 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a few exceptions to this, most predominantly within Written & Published Work, which is the arts domain that would appear to be in the sharpest decline, showing a decline both from before pandemic numbers, as well as within 2023.
