Dataset

Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA)

Periodicity

The ACPSA is updated annually

Source/Sponsor

Partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts’ Office of Research & Analysis and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

Research Topic

The arts economy

Notable Features

Inflation-adjusted estimates of arts and culture’s contributions to U.S. GDP

While this year’s release only contains data for 2017-2022, the full time-series starts in 1998, with estimates also including:

Value added to U.S. GDP

Gross output

Employment and compensation by arts and cultural industries

Supply and consumption of arts and cultural goods and services, including imports and exports

Gross output price indexes for arts and cultural commodities

Economic multipliers for arts and cultural commodities and employment

Updates

This release shows new estimates for 2022, in addition to providing revised data for 2017-2022. Statistics reported this year supersede all prior ACPSA statistics. The 2017 Benchmark Input-Output Table, produced by BEA in 2023, is the new inter-industry framework for ACPSA statistics. Prior ACPSA data sets used the 2012 inter-industry framework and, therefore, are not directly comparable. 

Overview

Covering the full year of 2022, the new dataset spotlights an additional year of growth in the wake of COVID-19 in the U.S. In 2022, the sector reached an all-time high of $1.1 trillion in value added to the U.S. economy. To be sure, the growth has not been distributed uniformly across all arts industries. Performing arts organizations, non-government museums, and arts-related construction are among ten arts industries that have yet to reach their pre-pandemic levels of economic value. Still, the overall arts economy grew by 4.8 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2021 and 2022.

Beyond growth in its value added to the economy, the sector has experienced a rise in total employment levels. In 2022, arts and cultural employment caught up with pre-pandemic levels to reach 5.2 million wage-and-salary workers in 2022. Industries with the greatest gains in employment include: independent artists, writers, and performers; computer systems design; web publishing and streaming; and certain specialized design services.