Artists Clobbered By COVID-19, With 2.7 Million Creative Job Losses In The United States, Study Finds

Natasha Gural | 11 August 2020

Major museums and mega galleries fired employees and slashed salaries even as they nabbed tens of millions of dollars in PPP funding when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the global art world. The longer term impact of massive layoffs and revenue bleeds is yet to be felt, with the squeeze on arts and culture depleting our overall quality of life.

The fine and performing arts industries are bearing the brunt, with estimated losses of nearly 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion in sales, according to “Lost art: Measuring COVID-19’s devastating impact on America’s creative economy,” a report released today by the Brookings Institution, an American research group founded in 1916 on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C.

Co-authors Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, and Michael Seman, assistant professor of arts management at Colorado State University’s LEAP Institute for the Arts, weighed the impact of the global crisis on the creative economy, including people working in film, advertising, along with musicians, artists, performers, and designers.

Examining the period between April 1 through July 31, Florida and Seman estimate some 2.7 million creative Americans were fired and more than $150 billion in sales of goods and services for creative industries nationwide evaporated, representing almost a third of all jobs in those industries and 9 percent of annual sales.