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 value added contributions to U.S. GDP

Full time-series spans 1998-2020, 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 wave of the ACPSA measures the impact the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic had on the arts economy.

Overview

The new dataset covers 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic—a calamitous period for the nation and for many types of artists and arts and cultural industries. Between 2019 and 2020, the U.S. arts economy shrank at nearly twice the rate of the economy as a whole. Yet the arts and cultural sector is large and diverse. Acute economic distress for industries such as performing arts, museums, film, and arts facility construction did not prevent the sector from contributing more than $876 billion to U.S. GDP. Government did its part to help shore up the sector. Still, in a year of stay-at-home orders and shuttered venues, the only real growth came from web streaming services and online publishers.