Look Out For Not-So-Starving Artists By 2018

Posted by Robyn Gee on July 5, 2011

Creative Commons: Michael Caven

The search for America’s best dancer on Fox’s popular show “So You Think You Can Dance” is bittersweet. The winner gets a good chunk of money and excellent bragging rights, but lots of hopefuls walk away, defeated, to return to their day jobs that pay the bills. It’s hard to be an artist in this economy… right?

The National Endowment for the Arts released a report based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting that many artist occupations will grow just as fast, or faster, than the general growth of the U.S. labor force – which is supposed to grow by 10 percent by 2018. The U.S. is predicted to have fully recovered from the recession by 2018.

According to the report the following arts-related jobs have the highest projected growth rates: museum technicians, conservators, curators, landscape architects and interior designers.

Why interior designers? The report attributes this to the general aging of the U.S. population, which will in turn grow the health care industry and increase the demand for people to design these facilities.

The occupations with the lowest growth projection rates are radio and television announcers, fashion designers and floral designers because a lot of the U.S.’s design work is sent overseas, according to the report.

Surprisingly, actors, dancers, and singers will see an increase in growth and competition in their fields, though actors are the only performers that will see growth equal to that of the U.S. labor force because of the demand for more satellite television and cable shows. These professions are in the growing minority that do not require a college degree.

Check out Turnstyle’s coverage of BLS data and job projections.

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