NYC’s creative workers are increasingly self-employed, report says

Increasingly, being an artist in New York City means being self-employed.

So says a new report published Tuesday by think tank Center For An Urban Future, which found a recent shift from traditional employment to freelance labor among Big Apple creatives.

“ Essentially, since the pandemic, all the growth in New York’s creative economy has been freelancers and independent contractors,” said Eli Dvorkin, a report co-author and CUF’s editorial & policy director.

The report – which identified creative occupations using the most recent census data – found that since 2019, the number of self-employed creative workers in NYC has risen 12%, to 16.1% of all creative workers. That’s more than double the 6.9% of city private-sector workers currently self-employed.

In the same time period, overall employment in NYC’s creative industries has fallen approximately 6%, CUF found in a December report. That marked the first time in the think tank’s 30 year history that NYC’s creative economy has been found to be in decline.

The increasing shift to gig work is a trend far beyond the creative sector, but compounding factors, most notably the ever-growing affordability crisis, make the city’s artist population among the most negatively hit by a lack of the employer-supplied health insurance, paid-time-off and retirement benefits that generally come with a W2.

In 2015, CUF found that after adjusting for the cost of living, NYC creatives earn about 15% less than the national average. Today, it's 24% less.

“Creative work is becoming more precarious at exactly the moment New York is becoming less affordable,” said Dvorkin.

While New York’s artistic economy has been contracting, other cities’ have grown: Since 2019, Nashville's creative workforce increased over 17%, Dallas by 14%, and Miami by 12%, CUF’s December report found.

Though New York still has the nation’s largest creative economy, it is decisively shrinking.

“We are losing ground right now, as a city, to other places,” said Dvorkin. “The cost of living crisis has gotten to the point where it's much more realistic now to consider an artistic career in other parts of the country than I think it's ever been. And that's the threat the policymakers have to confront.”

The best option to alleviate the situation, CUF’s new report argues, is for the Mamdani administration to implement a portable benefits program, so freelance artists can maintain the same social security often restricted to full-time staffers even as they move among contracts and employers.

“We should be able to build an economy where freelance and independent work is a valid option that doesn't come with the level of precarity that it does today,” said Dvorkin.

Earlier this month, the National Arts Policy Alliance and Freelancers Union released a report calling for portable benefits, and the Mamdani administration also recognized portable benefits as a viable strategy in its Racial Equality Agenda, released Sept. 1.

By launching a portable benefits program, the new CUF study states, “city and state leaders can help more working artists build sustainable careers in New York – and begin adapting the benefits system to the way a growing share of New Yorkers actually work.”