Assessing the Magnitude of Creative Employment: A Comprehensive Mapping and Estimation of Existing Methodologies

Abstract

The present study surveys and maps the existing methodological approaches for measuring creative employment. Based on a unique matched employer–employee data-set which encompasses over three million Portuguese workers, we found that the magnitude of the creative class varies considerably between approaches, ranging from 2.5%, using the conventional industry-based taxonomy and 30.8%, using Florida's occupational proposal. The disparities are justified on the basis of the departure definition of what creative employment is and  operationalization issues regarding which industries and occupations should  be included. Interestingly, when we focus on “core” creative employment, the figures conveyed by the distinct approaches are strikingly similar (around 6%), suggesting that, at least where core creative employment is concerned, the distinct approaches converge. The diversity of approaches and measurements are not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but has to be adequately acknowledged in order to accomplish adequate public-policy guidance.

Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply indebted to two anonymous referees by their insightful and valuable comments. Sara Cruz acknowledges the financial support provided by a doctoral grant of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia—Ministério da Educação e da Ciência, Portugal.

Notes

1. Since the recent DCMS (2010b) report is an updated version of the official industry-based framework, and to the best of our knowledge there are no publicly available methodological notes on the first DCMS (1998, 2001) industry-based reports, we used the technical note of the DCMS (2010b) report, mapping only the part corresponding to the core creative industries/sectors—where the DCMS used UK SIC 2003 codes—in order to analyse the traditional DCMS industry-based approach.

2. Sources: CPP2010—the Portuguese Classification of Occupations of 2010, is compatible with ISCO-08, and is available at http://metaweb.ine.pt/sine/ (accessed September 2012); ISCO—08 codes are available at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/ (accessed September 2012); CAE (Rev. 3)—Portuguese Classification of Economic Activities, the most recent revision is available at http://metaweb.ine.pt/sine/ (accessed September 2012).

3. The average portion of 5% was in line with figures already reported in existing empirical literature, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization studies, available at http://www.wipo.int/ip-development/en/creativeindustry/economic_contribution.html (accessed February 2013).

4. Another recent study closely following Florida's approach is that by Mellander et al. (2010), who used Florida's definition of the creative class to study the occupational structure by type of industry. The mapping procedure is, nevertheless, rather similar to Florida's approach so we opted to not present it here.

5. Despite the use of more objective criteria on the selection of creative occupations, McGranahan and Wojan (2007, p. 200) recognize that the “creativity measure provides [an] arguably imperfect, reference for assessing the creativity requirements among summary occupations”.

6. Available at http://www.onetonline.org/find/descriptor/browse (accessed February 2013).

7. In this assessment, we undertook a detailed analysis on the categories that were recast by McGranahan and Wojan (2007, p. 201) and the structure of the US SOC 2000 codes of the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, using the information available at http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/socstruc.pdf (accessed February 2013).

8. Higgs et al. (2008) excluded some industry sectors and some occupations considered by the DCMS industry and occupational approach as being creative. They also added other industries and professions to their definition of Creative Core that were not considered by the DCMS industry and occupational-based approach. For further details, see Higgs et al. (2008, pp. 27–30).

9. Courtesy of the GEP/MSSS—Gabinete de Estratégia e Planeamento of the Ministry of Solidarity and Social Security of Portugal, October–December 2011. The GEP/MSSS is not responsible for the results and interpretation contained in this study. These are of the authors' full responsibility.

10. Data gathered from available at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2011-en/07/01/04/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2011-61-en, http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/comparative/tn0801018s/pt0801019q.htm (accessed June 2013).

11. At the time the estimations were undertaken—from October to December 2011—the nomenclature in use to extract 2009 data was still the previous version of occupational codes corresponding to the CNP94 (Classificação Nacional de Profissões—1994). Besides facing the already known difficulties related to more obsolete classification systems—the lack of information/SOC codes on the different categories of Designers, or the unavailability of occupational codes which were non-existent or not relevant at the time of that previous revision (e.g. Graphic designer, Interior designer, Survey and market research interviewer)—this constraint also required the exhaustive and time-consuming task of converting all the CPP2010 codes at five digits that were used in the mapping into the previous CNP94 codes at the maximum detail level of six digits, in order to capture the most precise information possible. Indeed, in order to achieve the best correspondence possible between the latest occupational revision CPP2010 and the previous nomenclature for occupations CNP94, it was necessary to look into the detail of six-digit codes, in every single case.

12. It is worth mentioning that in the microeconomic data-set we are using workers that are linked with more than one employer and workers with multiple records represent less than 3% of the whole data-set. When using combined industry and occupational-based approaches using this type of microeconomic data at a rather disaggregated level on the occupational codes, only those considered as creative occupations are taken into account in the calculation. In this case, we are dealing with about 7% of the whole data-set (which encompasses 3,128,126 workers), corresponding to the measure of the creative employment for the combined approaches. Thus, the number of potential multiple records for each worker is even more negligible, below 0.5%.