Arts employment by state and metropolitan area K.Cooper
Employment levels, average wages, and cost of living index
Introduction
Arts Employment Where are the jobs in the arts field? What are average wages versus cost of living?
If your career interests lie in the arts field, broadly speaking (including arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations ), this story map can help you analyze locations across the U.S. where you might live in regard finding jobs and financial prospects.
Of importance for job searching in the arts field is that there are huge variations by state and metropolitan area in employment levels, average wages, and cost of living. As you might suspect, wages in the arts and cost of living are positively correlated (71%), so the job with the highest wages across different cities of the country may not be the best option financially because of high cost of living. You might be better off with a good, but not top-paying job elsewhere because of lower cost of living.
To help you explore metropolitan areas for arts employment, this story map has two interactive maps that provide data on employment levels, average annual wages, and a cost of living index by state and metropolitan area. Also included is a sample calculation showing how to use the data from the maps to analyze the financial prospects for you of different metropolitan areas.
Disclaimer
The information in this story map is generally helpful, but there are sampling errors and approximations involved in making estimates or otherwise using the data presented. There are no guarantees of accuracy.
Arts Employment map
Map use and navigation
- Click the legend button (top right, second button down) to see the map legend.
- Click the magnifying glass to search for a location.
- Click the layers button at the bottom on the right to turn layers on and off.
- Click the + to zoom in, - to zoom out, and house icon to zoom to the default map view.
- You can also drag the map to pan and use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
- Click the magnifying glass icon (upper left of map) to search for an address or place.
- Zoom in far enough and metropolitan areas appear as points.
- Hover over a metropolitan point to get a pop-up with data on the area.
- Lastly click the fourth button down on the left to take a screen shot of the map.
The top 10 states in terms of annual average wages in the arts
Patterns on the map
The top 10 metropolitan areas in terms of wages in the arts (while only the major city is listed, data is for the city and surrounding metropolitan area)
