EY: EU Cultural and Creative Industry employs 7 million
A new study from EY finds that the European Cultural and Creative industry is a vibrant and growing driver of the European Union’s economy. According to the accounting and consulting firm, the industry currently has a size of €535.9 billion, and employs 7 million people.
Professional services firm EY recently teamed up with GESAC to assess the European Cultural and Creative Industry (CCI), with the aim of developing a common definition of sectors, assessing size and market developments and identifying upcoming trends. For this they performed quantitative and qualitative analysis.
The industry as a whole is made up of 11 discrete sectors, which, without overlap, contains: Radio, Magazines, Visual Arts, Music, Advertising, Books, Film, TV, Architecture, Gaming and Performing arts. In terms of economic output, the CCI industry has a total revenue of €535.9 billion and makes up 4.2% of Europe’s GDP.
Besides a sizeable contribution to GDP, the cultural sector, Europe wide, provides jobs to 7 million personnel and self-employed individuals, working across the sectors — 3.3% of the EU’s active population. This makes the CCI one of the largest employers in the European market, behind for instance construction (15 million) and relatively equal to food and beverage service activities (also 7 million). The sector though provides work for nearly 2.5 times more people than automotive manufacturers and 5 times more than the chemical industry. The largest sector within CCI, performing arts, employs 1.2 million and the smallest sector, radio, employs 97,000.
Above average growth
Besides the large revenue and high employment of EU nationals, the CCI is bucking the average in terms of growth since the financial crisis. Before the crisis there was a difference from the average of 2.5%, after the 2008 crisis, the difference amounted to 1.4%; the sector, even with reduced government funding, has grown by 0.7% yearly.