Dr Ruoxi Wang, University of Sheffield and Bernard Hay, Head of Policy at Creative PEC
Self-employed individuals make up a uniquely high proportion of the creative industries workforce, as well as playing a vital role in driving growth and innovation in the sector. The Good Work Review reports that in 2019, 31% of workers in the Creative Industries were self-employed, compared to 15% of workers across the UK economy. For this reason, improving data and evidence on the role of the creative self-employed workforce has been a core strand of work for the Creative PEC, for instance through reports and articles including Easton and Beckett, 2021; Scott and Davidson, 2021 and Edelman, Harris and FitzGibbon, 2021.
With increasing devolution, and in the context of the UK Government’s growth mission, we recognise there is a need for more granular data on the creative self-employed workforce to support policymakers at a local and regional level to design interventions that address the demands and challenges faced by the creative labour market. To address this, we [University of Sheffield] have published a data dashboard that provides the distribution of the self-employed in creative industries at both local authority and combined authority levels using data from the Census 2021 in England and Wales. In the rest of this blog, we will explore key insights from the data.
Summary of the data
To explore the creative self-employed workforce in England and Wales, we employ data from the Office for National Statistics. This dataset provides estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in employment the week before the census in England and Wales by occupation and by economic activity status: it does not include, for example, full-time students and retired people. This data offers a detailed breakdown of the workforce into employed and self-employed categories. The focus is on the self-employed workforce within the creative industries, using the list of creative occupations under the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020, highlighting the numbers and distributions of the self-employed workforce at both local authority and combined authority levels.
Descriptive statistics
Data from Census 2021 shows that self-employed constitute approximately 31.5% of the total creative occupation workforce (1.15 million) in England and Wales, compared to 16.8% across all occupations. The share of the self-employed workforce in arts, culture and heritage (ACH) sectors is even higher, at 59%.
People working in occupations such as artists; actors, entertainers and presenters; musicians; and dancers and choreographers are the most likely to be self-employed, with over 80% of these professionals in these categories. Conversely, occupations such as librarians; IT business analysts, architects and systems designers; and programmers and software development professionals are less likely to be self-employed, at less than 10%.
When examining spatial differences between combined authorities, Greater London, the West of England, and York and North Yorkshire have a higher proportion of self-employed relative to their total workforces. The creative self-employed workforce in Greater London comprises 3.6% of its total labour force and 33% of its creative workforce. Followed closely is the West of England, where creative self-employed individuals make up 2.6% of the area’s total workforce, and 33% of the creative workforce. Greater London also exhibits the highest concentration of self-employed actors, entertainers, and presenters among the combined authorities, making up 0.4% of its total workforce and 88.9% of all individuals in these professions. Meanwhile, the West of England leads in the proportion of self-employed artists, accounting for 0.3% of its workforce and 90.8% of all self-employed artists within the combined authorities. At the local authority level, 8% of the total labour force in Hackney are creative self-employed, comprising 40% of its creative workforce. Rushmoor has the lowest concentration of self-employed creative workers, with only 20.5% of its creative workforce classified as self-employed. In addition to the extremities observed at both combined authority and local authority levels mentioned above, more details on the creative self-employed workforce in England and Wales can be found in the dashboard.
How to use the dashboard
This dashboard displays creative self-employed workforce by local authority, combined authority and Greater London. By selecting a local or combined authority or Greater London, the dashboard presents interactive data at different levels. You can choose a specific local authority, and the dashboard will then show the workforce share of self-employed and employed individuals for each occupation, the actual numbers of self-employed in the creative workforce, and the detailed percentage out of the total labour force for that local authority. Additionally, you can select different occupations to compare variations among them and identify the top ten local authorities with the highest self-employed rates in the total labour force for the selected occupations.
This is a guest blog for the Creative PEC website. Any views expressed are those of the authors who is responsible for all content.
