The nonprofit arts industry might be the new General Motors. Last week, just before a congressional subcommittee was to suggest a funding level for the NEA, Americans for the Arts released partial results from “the most comprehensive economic impact study of the nonprofit arts and culture industry ever conducted in the United States.” Guess what: the industry’s still booming! Or at least it was in 2005, the year studied, despite recent warnings from other quarters that philanthropic and government support is not keeping pace with its growth.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
According to the study, nonprofit arts now produce 5.7 million “full-time equivalent” jobs (unfortunately not the same thing as 5.7 million actual full-time jobs). It also claims that “nonprofits arts support more jobs than accountants and auditors, public safety officers, and even lawyers.” Americans for the Arts president Robert L. Lynch calls the study, which included 6,000 organizations and nearly 95,000 arts attendees, “a myth buster” and says it demonstrates that “the arts are an industry that stimulates the economy.” Lynch didn’t have to wait long for evidence of the study’s impact: the day after it was released and after a “special briefing on Capitol Hill,” the House interior appropriations subcommittee approved $160 million in NEA funding for 2008, $35 million more than this year. In the unlikely event that this recommendation sails through the rest of the legislative process, it’ll be the largest increase in NEA history.
Groups left out of the study can determine their individual economic impact with the help of a DIY Arts & Economic Prosperity Calculator, available at americansforthearts.org. For example, you can put a number to the jobs you’re supporting in your community by dividing your annual budget by 100,000 and multiplying the result by a full-time-equivalent jobs number from a table accompanying the instructions. Plug in other numbers, consult other tables, and you can calculate the taxes you’re generating and the economic impact of all those dinners, hotel rooms, new clothes, and tanks of expensive gas you’ve ostensibly caused your audiences to buy.
The Astrophysical Journal’s current contract with the University of Chicago Press runs through November 2008; after that those 40 editors and production staffers will likely be hitting the street. “We’re always looking to acquire other journals,” Gupta says, “but 40 people is a lot,” and new business on the horizon “won’t come close to replacing those jobs.” The press is hunting for positions at the university for as many of the threatened employees as possible. Longer term, Gupta says, offshore outsourcing–the movement of editing and production jobs to places like the Philippines, India, and China–is a concern for U.S. publishers.
