Fantastic and accomplishing arts went from becoming one of the swiftest growing sectors in California’s innovative economic system to the a single with the steepest fall in work in the course of the pandemic, a new review from the Otis School of Artwork and Layout in Los Angeles uncovered.
The sector’s workforce contracted by 19.4 percent due to the financial shutdown, accounting for 76,000 work statewide in 2020.
Other imaginative fields proved much more resilient. Although enjoyment and digital media dipped by 3.3 % in 2020, in huge portion thanks to alterations in the generation of leisure material, it continues to be California’s most sturdy sector. It used just about a single million personnel statewide in 2020, mostly concentrated in Los Angeles County and the Bay Space.
In the meantime, architecture and similar providers have also proved specifically sturdy in the wake of COVID-19. The sector’s workforce of 225,850 Californians in 2020 mirrored only a 2.2 % decrease from the prior calendar year.

Courtesy of Otis School of Art and Style.
“The imaginative economic system is household to equally some of the toughest strike sectors by the COVID-19 recession, these types of as fantastic and undertaking arts, as very well as sectors that have been able to pivot and develop, like leisure and digital media, by adapting business enterprise models to shifting client desire,” the report study.
The inventive goods and products and solutions sector accounted for the largest one-12 months reduction of employment in California, with a reduction of somewhere around 4,000 jobs, or 10.4 per cent, in 2020. But the pandemic only accelerated employment trends that experienced now been in motion for several years. Strike by broader producing challenges, the sector employs only about 35,000 folks in California.
Similarly, trend has also been experiencing a extensive and regular drop in the condition for years. Using 52,000 staff in 2020, the sector noticed a contraction in work opportunities of 14.4 percent from the prior year because of to the pandemic.
The photo grows more sophisticated when damaged down by area. Prior to the pandemic, only the Bay Spot, the Capital Region, and San Diego saw employment maximize in between 2007 and 2020. And while the Bay Location and Southern California account for 80 % of inventive economy positions statewide, “the heart of gravity appears to be shifting absent from Hollywood and toward Silicon Valley,” the report states.
The moment household to California’s largest artistic economic system workforce, southern California has witnessed a sizable contraction in work owing to both of those the pandemic and traits in the style and innovative goods and goods sectors. The Bay Area’s creative industries, by contrast, “continue to surge specified the region’s potent technological know-how foundation and a robust digital media existence.”
As the pandemic enters its 3rd 12 months, the report argues that “it is much more critical than at any time that stakeholders across California’s creative economic system have interaction in evidence dependent discussions about how the condition can guidance and foster inclusive development of our inventive financial system and apply methods and policies that safe its long run financial benefit.”
The resourceful overall economy was accountable for a overall gross regional solution (GRP) impact of $687.6 billion in 2020—the equivalent of roughly 23 p.c of the state’s GRP.
It specifically employs just about 1.4 million men and women and supports a whole of 3.9 million workers throughout the state. The innovative economic climate outperforms other field sectors like government, manufacturing, well being care, and retail trade—sectors that generally receive bigger financial advancement, expertise growth, and plan aid.
According to the report, for every single 100 work opportunities in the innovative business, an added 180 jobs are supported in other sectors of the California financial system. The financial action generated by the California artistic economic climate was worth a lot more than $122.7 billion in taxes for all degrees of authorities in 2020. In full, each and every job supported by the industry’s activity resulted in $31,461 in additional tax revenue.
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