National Culture Indicators First Quarter 2024
Statistics Canada’s news outlet The Daily has released the National Culture & Sport indicators for the first quarter of 2024. The following provides a summary of the most relevant culture data.
The real gross domestic product (GDP) for both culture & sport grew 0.6%, to $14.5 billion in the first quarter, surpassing GDP growth for the total economy. Of that $14.5 billion, $12.8 billion was produced by culture alone.
Nominal GDP (that is, GDP in today’s dollars, not adjusted for inflation) for culture alone grew 1.2% overall, to $15.4 billion in the first quarter. However, growth was not seen across all cultural industries. While some industries, like culture education and training (2.8%,) audio-visual & interactive media (2.7%) and advertising (2.2%) saw strong growth, other industries saw declines: craft saw a 2.1% decline, written and published works saw a 1.2% decline and overall live performance saw a 0.2% decline.
The largest growth was undoubtedly in the film and video industry, which saw 11% growth after significant declines in the last half of 2023. The Daily suggests that this is due to the end of the writers’ and actors’ strikes, which ended in September and November of 2023, respectively.
Although written and published works saw a decline overall, the subdomains of collected information (1.3%), books (1.2%,) other published works (1.1%,) newspapers (0.4%) and periodicals (0.2%) all saw increases in their GDP. The overall decline is due to the 2.8% drop in GDP from the multi-subdomain, which includes various support services such as printing, translation and editing, and publishing retail, which has consistently declined over the last year.
There was an overall 0.3% growth in jobs in culture in the first quarter, reaching just over 640,000 jobs. While this is a minor increase, it is significant as this is the first increase seen over the past six quarters.
The film and video subdomain saw the largest growth, with a 7.6% increase in jobs, followed by culture education and training (1.1%), multi-domain (1.1%), and governance, funding, and professional support (0.9%). Within the heritage and libraries industry, archives (1.1%) and libraries (1.4%) also saw solid growth, as did advertising (1.5%) under visual and applied arts.
The most significant losses were in the live performance sector, with performing arts losing 2.5% of jobs and festivals and celebrations declining 1.8%. Written and published works saw an overall decline of 1%, with the largest losses in periodicals (1.3%). In the visual and applied arts industry, craft saw a decline of 1.7%, and in audio-visual and interactive media, broadcasting saw a significant 2.6% decrease.
Although 1,902 jobs were added in the first quarter, the majority were added by the film and video sector growth, which accounted for 4,216 jobs. Between the losses in live performance (1,835) and broadcasting alone (1,290), almost two-thirds of the gains in film and video were offset by these losses. The increase in jobs might be heartening, but the sector is still undoubtedly in crisis post-pandemic.
