CREATIVE or PRECARIOUS?
I came across a report put together by PriceWaterhouseCoopers for the Business Council of British Columbia. The report clearly defines the creative sector and paints a nice picture of what it looks like in B.C., highlighting the sector’s 3% annual growth. Ultimately, the report frames the creative sector as critical to the future of the province’s economy.
Unfortunately, the report makes a slew of unreasonable comparisons with traditional sectors like resource extraction and manufacturing. This had to be done, of course, because when other employment areas are brought into the picture (accommodation and food services for example) the creative sector, even with lofty projections included, is exposed as a very minor player and not such a obvious replacement for, or even addition to, more traditional sectors. The growth in creative jobs, like those in advertising, design, film and television, and information technology are quite far from outpacing the dramatic declines in virtually every other sector. Without even looking at the numbers, isn’t this obvious? (I mean, just from living here and walking around town...)
When you add, for example, the significant subsidies to the film and video game industries it doesn’t take an economist to notice the creative sector gets us nowhere when it comes to growing our economy. The report becomes still more ridiculous when you notice that it focuses all of its attention on, and derives its optimistic assessments from, the five year period between 2002 and 2007. Even ignoring the economic collapse immediately following this time frame, and its countless ripple effects, we now know this was a period of delusion and mass deception. Even without the collapse that followed, it should be concerning to see anyone using such a random and narrow frame to forecast a very shaky and unpredictable future.
While information technology is surely “opening up new markets” it also rapidly renders traditional jobs, and even whole industries, obsolete. There’s no way you, the Business council of British Columbia, or PriceWaterhouseCoopers have failed to notice modern hardware and software (and the ecosystem of networked devices and machines they enable) quickly replacing humans. Everyone can see silicon, data, and algorithm stepping in for skilled and relatively unskilled alike. With even a moderately broad view of employment and the economy, the future of work looks uncertain. Just looking at what’s already happening today, ignoring trends and technologies we can already safely anticipate, you can still see a significant net loss in real job options, regardless of skills or experience.
Even if the creative sector blossomed into something that could save the day, neutralizing all the job losses, the work on offer is nothing like what it replaces. The culture within the creative sector, and the trend in employment generally, biases toward diminished forms of work. The creative sector today offers poorer conditions, and significantly lower wages and benefits, as well as little if any security compared to what was expected and tolerated by the previous generation (or even elsewhere in the world today.) Does this leave anyone with any doubt that the creative sector falls short of being the employment bedrock upon which to grow an already imploded and crumbling middle class? In fact, despite all the rosy statements and graphics, PriceWaterhouseCoopers was even forced to admit that “the relatively high employment estimates for the sector suggest lower average productivity in terms of GDP per worker.” And further, that, “this can partly be explained by the large number of independent contract workers in creative industries who may not work throughout the year.” So, there it is: by 2020 or thereabouts, a significant part of an entire generation – working within a critical sector of the economy – is supposed to subsist on unpredictable contract work punctuated by regular stints of unemployment? Great plan!
I don’t have to read reports or speculate about any of this. I’ve worked in the “creative sector” for several years doing freelance graphic and web design for friends, relatives, not-for-profit organizations, and small businesses. While there are some perks (like being able to work from home, or wherever you like, and not having some manager looking over your shoulder or calling meetings that do little more than waste everyone’s precious time) more than anything these jobs are highly competitive, stressful, deeply undervalued and, therefore, poorly paid. In my experience, there are several fundamental problems with this work. The first is that, as a freelancer, it’s difficult to convince a customer to pay for a project based on what the work is worth to the company. For example, if an organization has $5,000 allotted for producing their annual report, as a freelancer it is very difficult to get $5,000 and not more than a low hourly rate. The project, your skill-set, and the end result are surely worth $2,000 or $5,000 – and they had that money to spend. You may negotiate $300 or even $600 for ten or twenty hours of work and then struggle to find another project before your rent is due.
But my favourite example of this is the famous Cowichan sweater. It takes decades to develop the skills to produce a sweater from scratch. Ignoring time or labour procuring, spinning, and dying the wool, just the knitting of one sweater alone takes highly skilled artisans around seventy hours. Yet this beautiful, coveted, and unique product typically retails for only $200. (While a jacket made of cheap synthetics in a sweatshop, or almost entirely by machine with little human labour, can cost the same or even much more.) At this rate sweater-makers cannot even expect to be paid something close to minimum wage for their labour. At a paltry minimum wage these sweaters should cost closer to $1,000, just for the knitting time alone. At a rate worthy of their experience and craftspersonship, and the labour of the whole production process, these sweaters should cost closer to $5,000. No? Yes! (Certainly there are countless jobs out there, requiring little skill and producing little tangible good, that yield considerably higher earnings. What exactly does a Real Estate Agent, Wealth Manager, Senator, or Rent-seeker do that a seven-year-old or even a blind Golden Retriever couldn’t?)
This whole prospective economic foundation may not be so dire if, generally, we as a culture actually valued the arts; but we simply do not (and changing culture is far harder than transforming your economy.) If the above example doesn’t work for you, you can easily find, virtually anywhere and in any media, public requests for free work from creatives. It’s an open and running joke among even world-class artists and musicians the endless requests for unpaid, “for exposure” work. Even the bottomless pockets of global heavyweights like Coca-Cola or Oprah can be found to regularly solicit musicians, performers, artists, and graphic designers with generous offers of zero pay and nothing like a guarantee of meaningful exposure. In fact, the world virtually revolves on a behind the scenes, “for exposure” industry. It’s disgusting.
Another obvious problem with this work, and the whole creative sector, is that everyone with a Macbook and a pirated copy of Photoshop thinks they’re equipped to do this work. And even if they’re sure to run into trouble they’re equally sure “there’s an app for that” to replace knowing how to code their own HTML, build a website, kern some text, or take a photograph. And they’re willing to wager that nobody can tell the difference, happy to write a resume or fill out a job application on that assumption. And just by looking around at the absolutely ridiculous design work plastered throughout every mall and grocery store, and noticing the total lack of visual literacy in our society, they’d probably be safe in that assumption too. While this may look like an open door accessible to many, more than anything it signifies the depreciation of an already flooded and depressed sector and not an opportunity with room for growth.
You may suggest the simple way out is to be skilled in your field. Yet, proven skills don’t translate to “jobs” (aka short-term contracts) or money in your pocket (or even exposure) in the creative economy. More than any other sector this work is easily outsourced. Even today, much of the creative work that can be digitized has been and is not offered up to local workers at a reasonable rate but is instead turned into contract work for anyone across the planet who has access to a computer and an internet connection. Dozens of websites and platforms abound, all with hundreds of thousands of skilled creatives (from Bangladesh to Belgium to Bolivia to Bora Bora) bidding against one another to be biggest loser on even the smallest, most insignificant contract. This model is great for businesses, who get cheap labour and a great product, but devastating for skilled workers with bills to pay (doubly so for those living in a province with some of the highest living costs on planet Earth.)
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