Facts and Stats

The Province supports research on the arts and culture sector’s impact and role as an economic driver in local communities.

Stats are provided via the Provincial and Territorial Culture Indicators produced by Stats Canada.

Did you know:

• One in every five Canadian artists (20%) resides in B.C.
• With 39,700 artists or 1.4% of the total provincial labour force, B.C. has the highest proportion of artists in the labour force than any other Canadian jurisdiction. 
• With 154,800 culture workers, or 5.4% of the province’s overall labour force, B.C. has the highest proportion of culture workers in Canada, well above the national average of 4.4%. 

Other interesting facts:

• In B.C. cultural GDP totaled $8.6 billion in 2021, a 12.6% increase from the previous year.
• The largest contributors to this increase were the audio-visual and interactive media (+16.3%)  and visual and applied arts (+14.4%) domains.
• Growth was also strong in culture governance, funding and professional domains, which increased by 11.3% (+$145.2 million). 
• As a proportion of B.C.’s total GDP culture accounted for 2.6% in 2021. 
• Jobs in the cultural domain accounted for 4.3% of all jobs in the province, the highest percentage since 2014 when this data set was developed.  
• There were 115,964 culture jobs in British Columbia in 2021, 15.9% higher than the previous year. Economy-wide jobs increased by 10.1% in the same time period.