Marlowsphere Blog (#122)

The last Marlowshpere blog (#121) took an overall look at job growth/job prospects for those in the so-called “creative class.” This is an appropriate time of year to do so given that May and early June are when college students attend graduation commencement ceremonies.

In this blog I take a specific look at those wishing to enter the fine and performing arts.

There are hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States that offer undergraduate and
graduate degrees in all manner of fine and performing arts disciplines. But earning a degree in dance, graphics design, music, photography, acting, and other fine arts is no guarantee of success. Unlike degrees in various technologies, the sciences, medicine, engineering, accounting, et al, where demand is strong, success in the fine and performing arts may be enhanced by higher education study, but it is far, far from a guarantee.

The hard fact is only a very small portion of those who pursue the fine and performing arts as a lifelong endeavor achieve a modicum of professional and financial success. And given the impact and unintended consequences of electronic technologies, such as the Internet, even a smaller percentage achieves mega professional and financial success. The fine and performing arts are not safe endeavors. Despite the overwhelming odds against success, however, many do pursue the life of an artist.

Below are the expected job growth/job prospects for those who wish to pursue a life in the fine and performing arts according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2012-2022. All descriptions below are drawn directly from this aforementioned Federal government source.

Job Growth/Job Prospects: The Fine & Performing Arts

• Dancers and Choreographers: +13%
• Graphic Designers: +7%
• Music Directors and Composers: +5%
• Musicians and Singers: +5%
• Photographers: +4%
• Actors: +4%
• Craft & Fine Artists: +3%

 
Dancers & Choreographers: +13%

Employment of dancers is projected to grow 6 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations. Employment of choreographers is projected to grow 24 percent from 2012 to 2022, much faster than the average for all occupations. Dance companies are not expected to add many jobs over the decade. Generally, when one company disappears, a new one replaces it, without any change in the total number of companies. There may be better opportunities for dancers and choreographers in large cities, such as New York and Chicago, with many dance companies and performances.

A growing interest in dance in pop culture may provide opportunities in fields outside of dance companies, such as TV or movies, casinos, or theme parks. Many dancers and choreographers, nonetheless, struggle to find opportunities to express themselves creatively; newer dance companies rely on word-of-mouth, grants, and public funding. However, public funding and grants for dance performances can be highly competitive.

The growing interest in dance in pop culture is expected to lead more people to enroll in dance schools, and growing enrollment should create more jobs for choreographers. Dancers and choreographers face intense competition, and the number of applicants is expected to vastly exceed the number of job openings.

Dancers who attend schools or conservatories associated with a dance company may have a better chance of finding work at that company than others.

Musicians & Singers: +5%
Employment of musicians and singers is projected to grow 5 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations. Growth will be due to increases in demand for musical performances.

Digital downloads and streaming platforms make it easier for fans to listen to recordings and view performances. Easier access to recordings gives musicians more publicity and grows interest in their work, and concertgoers may become interested in seeing them perform live.
There will be additional demand for musicians to serve as session musicians and backup artists for recordings and to go on tour. Singers will be needed to sing backup and to make recordings for commercials, films, and television.

However, employment growth will likely be limited in orchestras, opera companies, and other musical groups because they can have difficulty getting funding. Some musicians and singers work for nonprofit organizations that rely on donations, government funding, and corporate sponsorships in addition to ticket sales to fund their work. During economic downturns, these organizations may have trouble finding enough funding to cover their expenses.

There will be tough competition for jobs because of the large number of workers who are interested in becoming musicians and singers. In particular, there will likely be considerable competition for full-time positions.

Musicians and singers with exceptional musical talent and dedication should have the best opportunities.
 
Music Directors & Composers: +5%
Employment of music directors and composers is projected to grow 5 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations.

The number of people attending musical performances, such as symphonies and concerts, and theatrical performances, such as ballets and musical theater, is expected to increase moderately. Music directors will be needed to lead orchestras for concerts and musical theater performances. They will also conduct the music that accompanies ballet troupes and opera companies.

In addition, there will likely be a need for composers to write original music and arrange known works for performances. Composers are also expected to be needed to write film scores and music for television and commercials.

However, growth is expected to be limited because orchestras, opera companies, and other musical groups can have difficulty getting funds. Some music groups are nonprofit organizations that rely on donations and corporate sponsorships, in addition to ticket sales, to fund their work. These organizations often have difficulty finding enough money to cover their expenses. In addition, growth may be limited for music directors who work for public schools because state and local governments continue to struggle with school budgets.

Despite expected growth, tough competition for jobs is anticipated because of the large number of people who are interested in entering this field. In particular, there will be considerable competition for full-time positions. Those with exceptional musical talent and dedication should have the best opportunities. Many music directors and composers experience periods of having no work; during these times, they may work in other occupations, attend auditions, or write music.

Photographers: +4%
Employment of photographers is projected to grow 4 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations. Overall growth will be limited because of the decreasing cost of digital cameras and the increasing number of amateur photographers and hobbyists.

Improvements in digital technology reduce barriers of entry into this profession and allow more individual consumers and businesses to produce, store, and access photographic images on their own.

Employment of self-employed photographers is projected to grow 4 percent from 2012 to 2022. Demand for portrait photographers will continue as people continue to need new portraits. In addition, corporations will continue to require the services of commercial photographers to develop compelling advertisements to sell products.

Declines in the newspaper industry will reduce demand for news photographers to provide still images for print. Employment of photographers in newspaper publishing is projected to decline 36 percent from 2012 to 2022.

Photographers will face strong competition for most jobs. Because of reduced barriers to entry, there will be many qualified candidates for relatively few positions.

In addition, salaried jobs may be more difficult to obtain as companies increasingly contract with freelancers rather than hire their own photographers. Job prospects will be best for candidates who are multitalented and possess related skills such as picture editing and capturing digital video.

Actors: +4%
Employment of actors is projected to grow 4 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations. Job growth in the motion picture industry will stem from continued strong demand for new movies and television shows. However, employment is not expected to keep pace with that demand.

Production companies are experimenting with new content delivery methods, such as video on demand and online television, which may lead to more work for actors in the future. However, these delivery methods are still in their early stages, and it remains to be seen how successful they will be.

Actors who work in performing arts companies are expected to see slower job growth than those in film. Many small and medium-size theaters have difficulty getting funding. As a result, the number of performances is expected to decline. Large theaters, with their more stable sources of funding, should provide more opportunities.

Actors face intense competition for jobs. Most roles, no matter how minor, have many actors auditioning for them. For stage roles, actors with a bachelor’s degree in theater may have a better chance than those without one.

Craft & Fine Artists: +3%
Employment of craft and fine artists is projected to grow 3 percent from 2012 to 2022, slower than the average for all occupations.

Employment growth of artists depends in large part on the overall state of the economy, because purchases of art usually are optional. During good economic times, more people and businesses are interested in buying artwork; during economic downturns, they generally buy less.

Although there is always a demand for art by collectors and museums, the employment of artists can be affected by the level of charitable giving to the arts, which has been decreasing somewhat in recent years.

In addition, job growth for craft artists may be limited by the sale of inexpensive, mass-produced items designed to look like handmade American crafts. However, continued interest in locally made products and craft goods sold online will likely offset some of these employment losses.

Demand for illustrators who work on a computer will increase, as media companies use more detailed images and backgrounds in their designs. Illustrators and cartoonists who work in publishing may see job opportunities decline, as traditional print publications lose ground to other media forms. However, new opportunities are expected to arise, as the number of electronic magazines, Internet-based publications, and video games grows.

Competition for jobs as craft and fine artists is expected to be strong, because there are more qualified candidates than available jobs. Only the most successful craft and fine artists receive major commissions for their work.

Despite the competition, studios, galleries, and individual clients are always on the lookout for artists who display outstanding talent, creativity, and style. Talented individuals who have developed a mastery of artistic techniques and marketing skills will have the best job prospects.

Competition among artists for the privilege of being shown in galleries is expected to remain intense, as will competition for grants from funders, such as private foundations, state and local arts councils, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Because of their reliance on grants, and because the demand for artwork is dependent on consumers having extra income to spend, many of these artists will find that their income changes with the overall economy and the federal budget.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other of my blogs, please write to me at
meiienterprises@aol.com.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
May 18, 2015

© Eugene Marlow 2015

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Marlowsphere Blog (#121)

Practioners in the creative arts are in trouble.

According to author Scott Timberg in his recently distributed book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class (Yale University Press, 2015):

The creative class is melting. . . .

Record shops and independent bookstores close at a steady clip; newspaper and magazines announce repeated waves of layoffs. Tower Records crashed in 2006, costing 3,000 jobs. The bankruptcy of Border Books in 2011—almost 700 stores closed, putting roughly 11,000 people out of work—is the most tangible and recent example. One of the last video rental shops in Los Angeles—Rocket Video—closed soon after. On a grand scale, some 260,000 jobs were lost in traditional publishing and journalism in the three years after 2007, according to U.S. News & World Report. In newspapers alone, the website Paper Cuts tracked more than 40,000 job cuts in the three years after 2008. (p. 15).

Timberg’s latest offering seems to be a counterpoint, a bookend to Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (Revisited) (Basic Books 2014), described as follows on Amazon.com:

Initially published in 2002, The Rise of the Creative Class quickly achieved classic status for its identification of forces then only beginning to reshape our economy, geography, and workplace. Weaving story-telling with original research, Richard Florida identified a fundamental shift linking a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing importance of creativity in people’s work lives and the emergence of a class of people unified by their engagement in creative work. Millions of us were beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always had, Florida observed, and this Creative Class was determining how the workplace was organized, what companies would prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities would thrive.

In The Rise of the Creative Class (Revisited), Florida further refines his occupational, demographic, psychological, and economic profile of the Creative Class, incorporates a decade of research, and adds five new chapters covering the global effects of the Creative Class and exploring the factors that shape “quality of place” in our changing cities and suburbs.

Timberg takes fellow author Florida to task in terms of the definition of “creative class” when he writes:

“. . .a more useful understanding of the creative class would include anyone who helps create or disseminate culture. So along with sculptors and architects, I mean deejays, bookstore clerks, theatre set designers, people who edit books in publishing houses and so on.” (p. 10).

The balance of Timberg’s 310-page book is essentially a description of what has happened to the so-called creative class—Architects, Dancers & Choreographers, Graphic Designers, Multimedia Artists & Animators, Music Directors & Composers, Musicians & Singers, Actors, Photographers, Craft & Fine Artists, Film and Video Editors and Camera Operators, Writers & Authors, Editors, and Reporters, Correspondents, and Broadcast News Analysts—especially since the beginning of the “Great Recession.” It is not a pretty picture, especially those in the legacy print and electronic media: Writers & Authors, Editors, and Reporters, Correspondents, and Broadcast News Analysts.

A closing chapter attempts to provide a solution to the problems inculcated by the newer media, namely, the Internet and other social media, but it is akin to attempting to stop the forward  movement of a glacier during an ice age: the results are inexorable.

It would not be fruitful to attempt to argue with Timberg’s analytical descriptions of what has happened to the creative class in terms of societal value and economic consequences. Even cursory, anecdotal evidence supports his perspective. In this blog, therefore, I will look to the future for some answers. In this context, I looked at the employment predictions from the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, namely its “Occupational Outlook Handbook.”

Following are the numbers for 13 categories in the “creative class” for the decade 2012-2022 with respect to job growth and job prospects:

The Overall Picture: 2012-2022 Job Growth/Job Prospects

• Architects: +17%
• Dancers & Choreographers: +13%
• Graphic Designers: +7%
• Multimedia Artists & Animators: +6%
• Music Directors & Composers: +5%
• Musicians & Singers: +5%
• Actors: +4%
• Photographers: +4%
• Craft & Fine Artists: +3%
• Film and Video Editors and Camera Operators: +3%
• Writers & Authors: +3%
• Editors: -2%
• Reporters, Correspondents, and Broadcast News Analysts: -13-14%

To put this in a larger context, the average job growth rate for all occupations in the same period, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, is 11%!

Clearly, according to these projections, architects and dancers/choreographers appear to have the best (positive) prospects for job growth over the period 2012-2022. On the other side, editors, reporters, correspondents, and broadcast news analysts have the worst (negative) prospects for job growth in the same period.

What is not so apparent is that these numbers do not reflect the (perhaps) unintended consequences of the new media, specifically the Internet. According to Jaron Lanier’s book Who Owns the Future? (Simon & Shuster 2013) the few success stories distract from what has really happened: The Internet has destroyed the livelihoods of the creative class’s middle tier—musicians, photographers, and journalists—but that it will move on to undercut other middle class jobs.

In many places Lanier’s posits that the new economy “. . . is good for whomever owns the computer server.” This perspective points to the dramatic shift with respect to the creation of content. Take several of the leading Internet web sites: YouTube, e-bay, PayPal, Spotify (and a host of online music distributors), Google, and Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other lesser known web sites, such as cdbaby.com. None of these web sites create content. All these web sites provide a platform for content created by users. Users create the content. Meanwhile, each web site makes money from users use of the web site.

The next blog will take a deeper look at the job prospects for those in the fine and performing arts. A subsequent blog will look at job prospects for those in other “creative” professions, such as architects, on the one hand, and reporters, on the other.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other of my blogs, please write to me at
meiienterprises@aol.com.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
May 4, 2015

© Eugene Marlow 2015

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Marlowsphere Blog (#117)

Freedom House—an organization founded in 1941 by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and attorney Wendell Willkie—has published its latest report on “Freedom in the World 2015.”  It is not a pretty picture.

While the second half of the 20th century witnessed the growth of freedom in the world, in the late 20th century (starting in 1995) until now, human rights freedoms, country by country, has declined on a global basis. The kind view is that the growth of freedom has at least stagnated. To quote from the report:

More aggressive tactics by authoritarian regimes and an upsurge in terrorist attacks contributed to a disturbing decline in global freedom in 2014. Freedom in the World 2015 found an overall drop in freedom for the ninth consecutive year.

Nearly twice as many countries suffered declines as registered gains—61 to 33—and the number of countries with improvements hit its lowest point since the nine-year erosion began. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a rollback of democratic gains by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s intensified campaign against press freedom and civil society, and further centralization of authority in China were evidence of a growing disdain for democratic standards that was found in nearly all regions of the world.

The worst regions of the world with respect to lack of freedom are Northern Africa and the Middle East.

The decline (or stagnation) in human rights freedoms reported by Freedom House parallels the ranking of world countries with respect to journalistic freedom of the press. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) “World Press Freedom Index 2015″:

Two-thirds of the 180 countries surveyed for the 2015 World Press Freedom Index performed less well than in the previous year,” the France-based watchdog said. RSF attributed the decline largely to attacks on media as global conflicts proliferated throughout 2014. This includes not only repressive regimes, but also non-state groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State, which “used fear and reprisals to silence journalists”.

Iran, China, Syria and North Korea were among the places ranked as having the worst levels of press freedom. China came in 176th, one step down from last year.

. . . .Around the world, France ranked 38th (up one place) the U.S. 49th (down three places) and Russia 152nd (down four).

This blog has already pointed to the issue of the relationship between lack of literacy (or to put it another way, levels of illiteracy) and violence. The general conclusion is that where there’s significant levels of illiteracy (such as in Pakistan), there’s significant levels of violence, especially against girls and women. Further, where’s there’s significant levels of illiteracy (such as in Egypt), there’s significant lack of human rights freedoms.

But there’s another relationship that bears mentioning, and that is the relationship among levels of human rights freedoms (or the lack thereof), media ownership, and distribution of wealth.

The question is this: is there a relationship—that has evolved over the last 30-35 years—among the very real stagnation of growth of human rights freedoms in the world, the very real consolidation of media ownership on a global basis, and the very real high levels of wealth concentration on a global basis?

To provide some detail, in the last 30-35 years corporate ownership of media assets—print and electronic—has shrunk from about 80 companies to a mere handful. Depending on one’s definition, the major players in the media ownership industry range from a mere six to (perhaps) 12. The major players are such companies as: Disney, Bertelsman, Sony, COMCAST, News Corp., Time-Warner, CBS, et al.

During this same time period, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the middle class has stagnated. A recent report pointed out that 80 people in the world had as much combined wealth as 3 ½ billion people on the planet. With respect to the latter group, the reference is to the poorest people on planet Earth.

Granted, the 20th century has seen staggering rates of transportation, information, and communications technological innovation, literacy rates globally have risen significantly (according to UNESCO), healthcare has improved for more and more people globally, and in some parts of the world (China, for example, which is an irony), the middle class has grown dramatically, i.e., since Mao’s demise in 1976 several hundred million people have been brought out of poverty into the middle class.

Yet, in the same time period, the level of terrorism on a global scale has increased, fewer and fewer companies own more and more media assets, fewer and fewer people own more and more real and financial assets, and the growth of human rights freedoms has stagnated.

There was a time when the Internet was viewed as the technology that “would level the playing field for small vs. large companies.” To a degree this is true, but the fact of the matter is that large companies still own major portions of the playing field. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 in the United States—that had global repercussions—shuttered one major financial institution, Lehman Brothers, and a host of much smaller firms, not to mention the thousands of individuals who lost their homes; but the rest—those that were too big to fail—were saved by the tax payer!

It would be naïve to conclude that only financial institutions are the ones to point to for our current spate of global financial and geo-political problems. There are other reasons. One is the deeply imbedded clinging to outmoded beliefs and extreme religious concepts in certain parts of the world among certain communities. These communities are angered by the accelerating cultural changes brought on by technology and are reacting violently.

Another reason is the disruption of technology to cultural mores and norms in certain parts of the world. In general, people don’t like change. They want stability. Regardless, technological innovation brings about disruption to cultural mores and norms. In turn, external change challenges a culture’s world perspective. It’s hard to make the adjustment or give up perceptions that don’t work anymore. A good read on this subject is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Khun.   The concepts in this book can be applied to the individual, the family, the larger community, and the country.

The question then becomes: does the inexorable march of technological innovation create  opportunities for a few to grab wealth and political power to the detriment of the rest of the populace? Is there, indeed, a close (perhaps, inevitable) relationship among the stagnation of growth of human rights freedoms, media consolidation, and wealth concentration among a few in the last 30-35 years?

It cannot be mere coincidence.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other of my blogs, please write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
February 16, 2015

© Eugene Marlow 2015

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