A State of the Nations research report
Our latest State of the Nations report, ‘Job quality in the creative industries, 2026’, offers a comprehensive picture of what it means to work in the UK’s creative industries today across all creative sub-sectors.
Building on Creative PEC’s 2023 Good Work Review, the findings reveal that while in many respects work in the creative industries is ‘good’, for example in terms of full-time pay and autonomy, this sits alongside significant trade-offs in terms of job security, pay satisfaction, training and progression opportunities.
Drawing on 40 indicators of job quality – spanning pay, overtime, flexible working, employer pension provision, work-related illness, training and bullying – the report examines individual creative sub-sectors, highlighting where progress has been made and where action is most needed.
Key findings:
- Autonomy is far more common in the creative industries than all other priority sectors in the industrial strategy: workers report substantially more control over their job (50% vs 38%), the pace of work (56% vs 44%) and their working hours (48% vs 30%).
- Pay: full-time employees in the creative industries earn one-third (35%) more than the economy-wide average. However, a gender pay gap persists and people from working-class backgrounds experience lower pay and lower job security.
- Job security falls well short of the all-industry benchmark. It has fallen by 14% from 57% in 2014-16 to 43% in 2022-24 (compared with 51% in other industries).
- Workforce diversity remains a critical concern. Representation of people from working-class backgrounds has fallen since 2021 (from 25% to 21%), leaving the creative industries behind all other industrial strategy sectors.
- Employer training falls short of the all-industry average (55% vs 60%), and workforce training participation is the lowest of any industrial strategy sector.
- Creative Freelancing sees only 54% of practitioners satisfied with their household income (vs 71% of employees), with weekend working more than twice as common, and just 14% taking part in job-related training in the past three months (vs 21% of employees).
- Trade Union membership is consistently weak (8% vs 20% for other sectors).
What are State of the Nations reports?
Creative PEC’s State of the Nations research series analyses the latest data across four thematic areas to inform the development of policies relating to the creative industries. Its scope is the whole of the United Kingdom, and wherever possible data is presented for all the nations and regions. Regular reports on each area will be published biannually over the five years of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding. The themes and corresponding Research Consortium Partners are:
- R&D, Innovation and Clusters (University of Sussex)
- Internationalisation (Newcastle University)
- Arts, Culture and Heritage (University of Sheffield)
- Education, Skills and Talents (Work Advance)
This report is written by our consortium partners at Work Advance,
- Heather Carey (Work Advance)
- Ruoxi Wang (Work Advance)
- Dave O’Brien (University of Manchester)
Citation: If the information in this report is used in any subsequent research and/or publications, please cite as follows:
Carey, H., Wang, R. and O’Brien, D. (2026) Job quality in the creative industries, 2026. Creative PEC State of the Nations research series. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23763526
Credits
Report design by Mike Green/Green Doe Ltd.
