The four worlds of creative employees: the role of education level and job-education match

ABSTRACT

Creative industries have been perceived by policymakers as a promising driver of socio-economic development and a sector of talent concentration in many countries. However, studies of creative employment are relatively scarce, especially those regarding developing and transition economies. This paper explores the heterogeneity of the creative workforce by providing the first multifaceted analysis of its employment, educational and localization characteristics in 2017–2021 based on data from the Russian Labor Force Survey. The results demonstrate that substantial growth in creative employment was mainly due to the increase in the number of IT, marketing and public relations professionals. Four patterns of employment by education level and job-education match were identified – the post-industrial creative class, the cultural class, and artistic and traditional crafts – which differ by sociodemographic and employment characteristics. Finally, the study provides evidence that creative employment is concentrated predominantly in regions with city populations of over one million.

KEYWORDS:

• creative industries
• creative employment
• creative trident
• Labor Force Survey
• Russia
• creative economy

Acknowledgements

The article was prepared in the framework of a research grant funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (grant ID: 075-15-2022-325). The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data set is available by request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation: [Grant Number 075-15-2022-325].