Employment, Job Creation, and Economic Growth

The creative sector is an important source of growth in the global economy, and digital creative trade has increased sharply in recent years and particularly in the context of COVID-19. Digital content is replacing physical goods in the sector, for example, in music, books and gaming. Digital aggregators like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok and YouTube have fuelled rapid growth and diversified earnings towards streaming, ad-supported income and data monetization. Copyright revenues are also rising, and the share of digital collections is the fastest growth segment.

Cultural and creative sectors are a significant driver of local development both through direct job creation and income generation but also indirectly by spurring innovation across the economy. Beyond their economic impacts, they also have significant social impacts, from supporting health and wellbeing to promoting social inclusion and local social capital. Flanders (Belgium) has placed cultural and creative sectors as a priority in the region’s economic and social strategy.

Cultural and creative sectors are a significant driver of local development through job creation and income generation, spurring innovation across the economy. Beyond their economic impacts, they also have significant social impacts, from supporting health and well-being to promoting social inclusion and local social capital. Glasgow City Region in Scotland, United Kingdom has a long history of transformative cultural policy. Cultural and creative sectors are now one of the region’s strengths.

Cultural and creative sectors are a significant driver of local development through job creation and income generation, spurring innovation across the economy. Beyond their economic impacts, they also have significant social impacts, from supporting health and well-being to promoting social inclusion and local social capital. This paper offers a review of cultural and creative sectors in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy, highlighting issues and trends in regards to employment, business, entrepreneurship and financing in cultural and creative sectors.

This case study offers a review of cultural and creative sectors in Lithuania, highlighting issues and trends in employment and business development, financing and cultural participation. It brings a specific focus on three municipalities within the County of Klaipėda located on the Baltic coast – Klaipėda City, Neringa and Palanga – small cities specialised in port activities, logistics, traditional manufacturing and seaside resort tourism.

Colombia’s Orange Economy policy framework puts culture and creativity at the centre of its development agenda  Colombia’s National Development Plan (PND) 2018-2022 embeds the creative (Orange) economy within broader development objectives. The Orange Economy policy recognises culture and creativity not only for their intrinsic value, but also for their contribution to job creation, income and wealth generation and as a tool to foster local development, social cohesion and well-being.

Cultural and creative sectors are a significant source of jobs and income, and also generate important spillovers to the wider economy. However, the absence of internationally comparable statistics that reveal their full economic and social impacts also means that the sectors remain largely undervalued in the policy debate. As governments across the G20 reconsider growth models in the wake of COVID-19, cultural and creative sectors can be a driver in a resilient recovery.

This profile aims to analyse the wealth of data on the media and culture sector (MCS) and its sub-sectors, using as a starting point economic activities rather than occupational profiles. While this provides an opportunity to highlight the overall employment contribution of the sector (i.e.

Over the longer term, the creative economy is likely to be a key driver of economic growth as governments around the world look to rebuild their economies in the wake of the downturn associated with Covid-19. It is reasonable to expect that the sector will return to its long-term trend of growing faster than the wider economy as, for example, advertising is likely to recover strongly with the wider economy and other sources of income have been more resilient.

This report outlines trends in the world trade of creative goods and, for the first time, services by country for the period 2005 to 2014, and provides an outlook on the global creative economy for the period 2002 to 2015.