Wages for Artists and Creative Workers in Illinois

Looking at differences by sectors, artists and creative workers are overrepresented amongst the selfemployed (Table 3). In 2021, self-employed artists working full time made on average $31,275 - $19,087 per year less than self-employed non-artists. While substantial, this gap between artists and non-artists closed slightly when compared to 2019 when the income gap for self-employed workers was $24,149. Such income differences were less apparent in looking at workers in the private sector (where artists and creative workers make on average $134 less per year compared to non-artists), and in government (where artists and creative workers make on average $12,266 less than non-artists).

Table 3: Wages by Sector for Artists and Creative Workers (2019 and 2021)

Taken together, this wage information helps us to understand some of the potential issues which artists and creative workers may face with regards to housing consumption.

To summarize:

• Artists and creative workers are concentrated in higher costs regions of the state such as the Chicago and Northeastern region.

• Pandemic-era labor market instability has resulted in a rise in the number of individuals working as artists.

Amongst Illinois workers, artists are overrepresented amongst the self-employed, and those artists and creative workers who are self-employed tend on average to make substantially less than others who are self-employed.

These observations provide important context for thinking about housing consumption. Spatial concentration in higher cost regions, labor market uncertainty stemming from the COVID-pandemic, and an increased share of self-employed paint a picture of a population who are likely to face increased barriers to accessing housing, and who are likely to pay a greater share of their income for housing. The next section examines these issues in turn.