Income and employment conditions among artists and cultural professionals have been a central issue in Swedish cultural policy for decades, but results have remained unsatisfactory. According to studies made by the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis, artists and other cultural professionals work under poorer financial conditions than professionals with comparable education and experience in other sectors of society do. In its annual report of 2020, the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis stated that “The cultural institutions upon which many career opportunities rely in the cultural field are also facing financial challenges, especially with regards to their ability to act, due to trends in wage expenditures.” In that year’s situational assessment, the Agency identified the economic circumstances of the cultural sector as a threat to artistic freedom, along with “hate, threats and harassment”, and various forms of political control with and without direct financial connections (Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis 2020).
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation became significantly more problematic, and large numbers of people have ceased working in arts and culture due to increased difficulties (SOU 2021:77). Employment in arts and culture reached a low point during the winter 2020/2021 and the spring of 2021, but during 2022, the labour market appears to have recovered. From April 2022, and throughout that year, employment numbers were higher than the corresponding months 2019 (Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis 2023b).
Historically, Swedish support systems for the unemployed have often been relatively favorable to artistic professions, enabling independent professionals to mix short periods of employment and unemployment. The system has been criticized as enabling theatres to force independent performers to rehearse on unemployment aid. Programmes to help people into employment have also been used to finance, for example, trainee positions in the culture sector to a relatively high extent. Several initiatives to ”move resources from the unemployment budgets to the cultural sector have been taken. An example of this combined budgeting is the “theatre pool”, (Teateralliansen) financed by the government, to provide salaried training and rehearsal facilities for actors. Since 2008, similar pools are in operation for dancers as well as for musicians.
Since 2005, the Arts Grants Committee is responsible for monitoring economic and social conditions of artists and publishes annual statistical reports. In 2011, the Arts Grants Committee published a report concerning the employment situation and sources of income of Swedish artists. According to this study, artists spend 73 percent of their time on direct artistic work or administration of such, while 61 percent of their income derived from this. Of the artists who said they have been employed in their artistic profession during the previous year, 35 percent were permanent full-time employees and 15 percent of permanent part-time employees. 20 percent were temporary employees, and about 35 percent of those employed had so called project employment. In the Swedish labour market in general, 85 percent of all employees had permanent employment. The survey also indicates that artists’ labour is more mobile. One third of the artists said they had at least six employers or principals for their artistic work during a year.
In 2018, a Government commission submitted a report on artist policy, Konstnär – oavsett vilkor? (“Artist – regardless terms?”, SOU 2018: 23). The report describes the current conditions for professionally active artists in Sweden. According to this study, artists are increasingly working as freelancers, combining different types of projects, employment, and other sources of income, within and outside of the arts and culture sector. It concludes that current social security is not adapted to these new conditions in the arts and culture labour market. It also highlights the problem that persons with different backgrounds do not have the same opportunities to become artists, and that bias in recruitment to artistic education starts at a young age. Another issue discussed in the report is the concentration of artists to urban areas – especially the Stockholm area – making it near impossible to have an artistic career in large parts of the country.
These issues were revisited by the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis in a report published in 2023. The report shows that, in general, persons with a degree in the fields of arts and cultural heritage, who are active in these areas, have lower incomes than persons with degrees in other areas and active in those areas. For those with a degree in the arts, the mean income is lower than for those without a degree. These conditions are likely part of the reason why students in the arts tends to have higher-income parents, and parents with higher education than average, i.e., this is a path that one is more likely to set out on with a secure background (Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis 2023c).
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