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KEY WORDS: uncertainty, occupational choice, multiple job, oversupply
ABSTRACT
Artistic labor markets are puzzling ones. Employment as well as unemployment are increasing simultaneously. Uncertainty acts not only as a substantive condition of innovation and self-achievement, but also as a lure. Learning by doing plays such a decisive role that in many artworlds initial training is an imperfect filtering device. The attractiveness of artistic occupations is high but has to be balanced against the risk of failure and of an unsuccessful professionalization that turns ideally non-routine jobs into ordinary or ephemeral undertakings. Earnings distributions are extremely skewed. Risk has to be managed, mainly through flexibility and cost reducing means at the organizational level and through multiple job holding at the individual level. Job rationing and an excess supply of artists seem to be structural traits associated with the emergence and the expansion of a free market organization of the arts.
Reviewing research done not only by sociologists, but also by economists, historians and geographers, our chapter focuses on four main issues: the status of employment and career patterns, the rationales of occupational choice, occupational risk diversification, and the oversupply of artists.
INTRODUCTION
Artistic labor markets are puzzling and challenging ones for social scientists. As this review essay will show, theoretical work and empirical studies, stemming from various perspectives, may be brought together in order to solve some of these puzzles. The way these markets expand may help to understand what is a stake. Evidence of sustained growth in artistic employment over the last 20 years is amply documented by several surveys and Census sources, and trends are quite similar in most advanced countries. In the United States, over the period 1970-1990, the number of artists grew at a rate of 127% much more rapidly than the civilian labor force, and the rate of increase has continued to be high. The total number of women artists increased faster, and all artistic occupations, with the exception of musicians, have seen a steady shift toward a higher proportion of women. By contrast, ethnic composition of the artistic workforce remains considerably disequilibrated, the nonclassical music sphere being this time one of the relatively few exceptions.
The pattern of change, of course, varies across the different artistic occupations,...