Employment, Job Creation, and Economic Growth

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.

The orange economy contributes to creating approximately 30 million jobs in the world. During the COVID-19 crisis, arts and creative activities have helped support people in isolation and confinement. This thematic note brings in several concrete examples of projects that have used the creative sectors to support job creation. It discusses five main types of interventions: nurturing human capital, providing access to finance, expanding access to markets, building networks and clusters, and harnessing digital technology to support the sector.