Cultural Employment in South Africa

Overview

The Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) are attracting increasing attention worldwide as potential drivers of economic growth, innovation and job creation. The latter is particularly important in South Africa, which has very high unemployment rates. The first phase of this research was to adapt the UNESCO guidelines on defining cultural occupations for South Africa, using International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) codes. Following international trends, cultural occupations were defined to include both traditional cultural workers (such as writers, performing artists and sculptors) as well as those in the more commercial creative industries (such as architects and designers).
“Cultural employment” includes those working in “cultural occupations”, both in the CCIs and outside of them, but does not include those working in CCIs in non-cultural jobs.

Results show that cultural and creative occupations contribute significantly to employment in South Africa, making up 2.93% of total employment in 2014 (443 778 jobs), which is slightly more than mining, and about two thirds of the number of agricultural jobs. Time series analysis has shown that, while cultural employment can grow faster than non- cultural employment, it is more volatile, being significantly affected by economic downturns.

Compared to non-cultural jobs, more jobs in the cultural sector are in the informal sector, especially for women. There are also significantly more freelance (or “own account”) workers in cultural employment. The percentage of black African, coloured and Indian or Asian people employed in
cultural occupations is somewhat lower (81% in 2014) than in non-cultural occupations (89%).

As also found in other studies, cultural workers tend to have higher levels of education and earnings that non-cultural workers, suggesting that this sector has the potential to boost economic growth. However, cultural jobs tend to “cluster” in some provinces, notably those with larger cities.

This report also demonstrates how reliable, national-level data, collected by Statistics South Africa, can be used to provide information on cultural employment.