Artists' income

The Australia Council artists survey, Don't give up your day job, collected information relating to practising professional artists in Australia.

The survey included full-time and part-time artists; employed and self-employed artists; and artists regardless of whether all, some or none of their income was from art practice.

The survey did not include artists whose primary involvement was in design (furniture, interior, fashion, industrial, architectural or graphic); artists working primarily in the film industry; or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists working in remote Indigenous communities.

According to Don't give up your day job, in 2000-01, artists earned an average of just over $24,000 from creative and other arts-related work. The average total income, including non-arts related work was about $37,000.

On average, musicians had the highest arts-related incomes, while community cultural development workers had the lowest.

Overall, actors, writers and musicians fared best in terms of average total incomes; dancers and community cultural development workers did least well.

Mean earned income of artists(a), 2000-01 financial year

Practising professional artists	Creative income ($)	Other arts-related income ($)	Total arts income ($)	Total non-arts income ($)	Total income ($)
Writers	20,400	6,100	26,400	19,700	46,100
Visual artists	12,600	7,300	20,000	9,300	29,300
Craft practitioners	19,100	4,000	23,300	7,000	30,300
Actors	22,500	5,000	27,400	14,300	41,700
Dancers	16,700	7,100	23,900	3,000	26,900
Musicians	17,700	9,800	27,600	13,500	41,100
Composers	12,700	14,000	26,700	11,500	38,200
Community cultural development workers	8,400	8,300	16,700	9,400	26,100
Total	17,100	7,400	24,600	12,600	37,200

(a) Mean average incomes may be strongly affected by outliers, that is, extreme values within a particular sample. Although the incomes of the majority of artists are relatively low, a few enjoy very high earnings. This sample contains several artists who earned incomes above $200,000 in 2000-01.

Note: All income is gross (pre-tax) income.

Source: Australia Council, Don�t give up your day job: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia (Throsby and Hollister 2003).

Artists� income, even counting non-arts related income, is below the income earned by others in the workforce. It is particularly poor when compared with professionals who have undergone 4-6 years of training, which is similar to the length of training undertaken by many practising professional artists. In 2000-01, artists earned a mean average of $37,200, compared with other workforce professionals who earned $54,400.