WORKFORCE POLICY REQUIRES NEW FRAMEWORK
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Creative sector policy often measures success through job creation and economic growth. But in industries built around freelance and project-based work, these measures often miss deeper workforce challenges. This article examines whether current employment measures capture the long-term health of the creative workforce.
CHALLENGE
Today’s government policies supporting Creative Sector production generally have two key goals: economic growth and jobs creation.
There has been a shift from cultural and social goals towards measurable fiscal support mechanisms, such as tax relief.
These ‘automatic’ incentives are often welcomed by industry leaders and policy-makers, not least in offering a consistent quantitive approach.
And it has helped growth in many countries. While most industries were suffering during the post-Covid economic climate, jobs in the EU Creative Sector increased by 4.5% in 2022.
There are signs however that the boom is slowing. Investments in productions have peaked in many TV and film markets. Some of the reasons were foreseeable and will be the subject of other Rethink Creative work.
But a critical employment factor is now raising increasing concern: How can the creative jobs market create a sustainable skills base in a project-centred and volatile environment.
CONTEXT
A large proportion of the workforce do not feel sustainable benefits from a growing economy. In the Creative Sector not all jobs are created equal. There is a vast difference between a freelance gig and career-making secure work.
Creative Industries support always has a political dimension. Governments are looking for benefits they can take the polls. Recent elections around the world have shown that statistics and measures, such as GDP, have little political value if they do not deliver wide, tangible improvements to life and work.
And that’s a problem when the clear trend across creative industries is towards short-term, precarious freelance gigs. They are not a side effect of creative sector growth there are the inevitable result of an industry largely focused on the next project.
In the UK games industry, freelancers represented less than 4% of developers in April 2023. By May 2024 that figure had risen to 13%, according to industry body TIGA. Similar patterns are visible across parts of the wider creative economy.
Freelancers make up 70% of the theatre workforce in the UK. Reports from campaigners claim 98% of theatre workers need a second source of income at points of their working life.
Most creative business have a longstanding heavy reliance on freelancers and there are plenty of workers who enjoy the freedom and flexibility.
In recent years, there has been a rise in so-called ‘solopreneurs‘, who find personal and professional advantages in going it alone. Some high-profile journalists, for example, have moved from working for publications to podcasts and blogs.
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Established and trusted freelance technicians and producers in TV and film can find themselves in demand, commanding high fees for their time.
There has been a rise in facilities and services to support those in fast-moving, agile but insecure businesses. Hybrid co-working spaces have seen strong growth, while millions have been invested in developing regional creative clusters.
And yet, in a jobs boom, many countries are struggling with skills shortages, low retention rates and a lack of agility to respond to opportunities.
Younger workers and those from less represented social backgrounds feel squeezed out of professional jobs. Financial instability associated with freelance work favours those with personal safety nets—family wealth, savings, or alternative income streams. What appears as labour market flexibility can therefore become a structural barrier to entry.
Employment insecurity also erodes retention and wellbeing. A 2024 report from the UK Film and TV Charity found that 64% of surveyed workers were considering leaving the industry, citing serious mental health pressures.
Policy-makers now need to ask if the current workforce model can sustain the sector’s future skills pipeline.
CONSEQUENCES
The assumption embedded in policy and funding frameworks is that job creation is a reliable proxy for a healthy and sustainable workforce.
Government policy aims in all priority sectors is to ensure a sufficiently skilled, diverse and adaptable workforce to support economic growth.
In the creative industries, however, the structure of the labour market raises particular challenges that require wider and deeper analysis.
The creative workforce is not simply a labour market statistic. It is an ecosystem that includes independent companies, freelancers, early-career entrants, training institutions, and global platforms operating at very different scales.
Within that ecosystem, systemic problems in established thinking are now strongly exerting themselves.
For businesses, high turnover can weaken skills development and institutional knowledge. Independent companies, often operating with limited margins, may struggle to retain experienced staff, while larger global platforms are better positioned to attract scarce talent.
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The final question we explore is where a policy ultimately lands—and for whom.
Entry-level roles are particularly vulnerable. As automation and artificial intelligence reshape parts of the production process, many of the junior positions that once served as training grounds for future creative leaders are disappearing. A sector that loses its entry points risks weakening the long-term development of its talent pipeline.
At the same time, a workforce model built primarily around short-term project work can make long-term skills development harder to sustain. Headline job numbers may increase, but the underlying talent pipeline becomes more fragile.
These dynamics increasingly intersect with wider debates across research, innovation and industrial strategy about how the UK develops future skills. Organisations such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council and other research bodies are exploring similar questions across multiple sectors of the economy.
The question for policymakers is not whether this matters — the evidence suggests it does. It is whether current frameworks are designed to see it. Most are not.
Supporting creative sector growth is an important policy goal. But ensuring that growth is sustainable requires further attention to the workforce structures that underpin it.
If workforce strategy for the creative sector is evaluated primarily against jobs and growth metrics, it is worth asking whether measures are designed to capture what is actually trying to achieve. Or if they are just inherited from a previous policy generation.
The central issue is not how many jobs are created, but whether the sector is building a workforce sufficiently skilled, diverse and adaptable to sustain the next phase of creative and economic growth.
