Jo Reed: Welcome to Quick Study, the monthly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. This is where we'll share stats and stories to help us better understand the value of art in everyday life. I'm Josephine Reed. Sunil Iyengar is the pilot of Quick Study he's the Director of Research and Analysis here at the Arts Endowment. Good morning, Sunil.

Sunil Iyengar: Good morning, Jo.

Jo Reed: We haven't spoken in a while, how was your summer?

Sunil Iyengar: It was pretty good. I did some hiking, traveled around the eastern part of the U.S., It was a lot of fun. How about you?

Jo Reed: I had a really nice summer, thank you. So we are going to march into fall with research findings from a new resource your team has created for the NEA website. Tell us about it.

Sunil Iyengar: Sure. So, well, back in the spring, our team launched something called the National Art Statistics and Evidence Reporting Center, which we support with the help of the organization American Institutes for Research. This virtual hub on the NEA website hosts a set of national arts indicators drawn from federal statistics all across government to measure different components of the U.S. arts ecosystem.

Jo Reed: Statistics, measurement, that's something your office has been doing for years. So what's new here?

Sunil Iyengar: Well, as we covered some months ago in a podcast interview with Census Director Rob Sanchez and NEA Chair Jackson, our agency has a long history of collecting, analyzing, and reporting stats from other federal agencies. So you're right. But we also have tried to establish a clearinghouse for such data. We have something called the National Archive of Data on Arts and Culture, or NADAC, which is an online repository to allow researchers to muck with the data. But over the years, we've seen a greater need for more accessible and more frequent reporting about the health and vitality of the sector. Goodness knows we saw this during the pandemic when we wanted to know on a much more timely basis than before, how arts jobs were affected, for example, or the overall arts economy. So we've set up a series of indicators to enable us and the general public to track the arts along four dimensions. They are arts and cultural assets, artists and cultural workers, arts participation, and arts and education. It's all on the research page of the NEA website under Measuring the Arts.

Jo Reed: I love that plug, it's very smooth.

Sunil Iyengar: Trying to get that in there.

Jo Reed: But it's also well-deserved. I always learn something when I read the research page on the website. So let's cut to the chase. What are some of the latest findings from the Statistics and Evidence Reporting Center at the NEA?

Sunil Iyengar: So one of the indicators, Jo, will be explained in a fact sheet we'll be releasing later this month, it's called "Who are the Arts Managers?" Now, we often get requests about this critical segment of the arts and cultural workforce. These are leading arts organizations-- those people leading arts organizations, but also by extension, those who are in management positions in other arts-related industries. So working within the constraints, and I guess I should say opportunities, of federal data systems, we realized we could look at the occupation code for manager using census data and tie that to a variety of industries within the arts and cultural sector. So those industries include performing arts, museums, galleries, film and video, sound recording, broadcasting, arts retail, and many more. Those industries cover both for-profit and non-profit establishments. So overall, by our count, there are over 677,000 arts managers based on the most recent data available. So let me give you a picture of what the pie chart looks like. A little over half of them belong to the thriving information sector, which includes libraries and archives, online publishing in the arts, and streaming. Newspaper publishers, film, broadcasting, and sound recording are all included in that, but another 233,000 work as managers in what's called the professional services sector, which includes specialized design firms, for example, or creative advertising. And another 97,700 belong to arts and entertainment industries, such as performing arts, museums, and galleries, or artist agents and promoters. And finally, nearly 9,000 of that pie I've talked about are arts managers in the retail sector.

Jo Reed: Do we know anything about the types of people who occupy these positions of management in arts and culture?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, well, we can look at gender for one thing. It's notable that 47% of arts managers are women, slightly fewer than men, but still higher than the percentage of all managers who are women, which is only 41%. And get this, women are by far the most likely to be arts managers in specific categories of arts industries. So 73% of managers of libraries and archives are women, 56% of managers of bookstores, 55% of magazine publishers, and 55% of managers of performing arts companies, or for that matter, museums and galleries. On the flip side, women are severely underrepresented as managers among such arts industries as sound recording, where they make up only 32% of all managers. Musical instrument and supply shops, they're about 33%. Arts-related software publishing, they're 36% of them are women managers, and out of the film industry, including video and broadcasting industries, they're only 38% of managers were women.

Jo Reed: What are you seeing in terms of race and ethnicity of arts managers?

Sunil Iyengar: Good question. It turns out that arts managers are slightly less racially and ethnically diverse than managers in general, or indeed the overall workforce. So they're more likely to be white, Asian, and or of more than one race. And they're less likely to be Hispanic, Black, or African-American, American Indian, or Alaska Native, or Pacific Islander than our US managers as a whole. So just to show where there is some more representation, just to look kind of on the positive side, let's look at Hispanic managers. The share of Hispanics among all US managers as a whole is only 8%, but it's actually as high as 16% when it comes to the share of managers in the motion picture and video industry who are Hispanic. And it's 17% in terms of managers among Hispanics, among managers of musical instrument or supply shop stores. Among Blacks or African-Americans who also make up about 8% of all managers, they are at 13% of managers in the sound recording business, and they are 12% of managers in artist-led businesses. Finally, among Asians, we see them make up 19% of managers in the arts-related software industry and 20% in web streaming and publishing. So my point with all this, Jo, is that researchers and policymakers can go in there and learn the latest on these numbers, which will be constantly refreshing, as one of several indicators to look at when monitoring the state of the sector.

Jo Reed: I'm sure that's going to be incredibly useful. But let me just ask you this. You're calling this the National Arts Statistics and Evidence Reporting Center. I get the statistics part, what do you mean by evidence reporting?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah. So one of the things we're using the center to do is to produce guides, literature scans, and topical reports that can translate evidence into promising practices for arts and cultural professionals. So for example, we've just released a report called "Curtains Up: Critical Factors Influencing Theater Resiliency," and that's a literature scan that makes recommendations based on available research about more effectively integrating technology platforms with theater's offerings. Including providing alternative and tailored ticket models, also curating, programming, and connecting with existing and new audiences, and exploring alternative administrative models while improving organizational climate and culture. So that's one of our first reports to come out of this hub, and we're looking forward to releasing several more as we try to fill gaps in what arts practitioners could use in terms of evidence being translated into action.

Jo Reed: And I know we look forward to reading them. Thank you so much, Sunil.

Sunil Iyengar: Thank you, Jo.

Jo Reed: That was Sunil Iyengar. He's the Director of Research and Analysis here at the National Endowment for the Arts. You've been listening to Quick Study. The music is "We Are One" from Scott Holmes Music, it's licensed through Creative Commons. Until next month, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.