Unemployment in the arts

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, about one-third of all practising professional artists experienced some form of unemployment between 1996 and 2001.

The average cumulative time out of work was 17 months, or around 3 months per year over this period.

Between 1996 and 2001, visual artists, craft practitioners and community cultural development workers experienced the most months of unemployment.

The mean number of months of unemployment for visual artists was 24 months; and for craft practitioners and community cultural development workers it was 23 months.