29 apr 2012

i heard a story on NPR this morning about how mid-level artistic jobs have been hard hit by the economic downturn. this type of job is generally at a small workplace or is a small part of staff at a large business, so when these people lose their jobs it's not like a big-news factory closing. i know an architect and a graphic designer who've both been laid off in the past three years, both due to the separate small businesses for which they worked suffering a decline. how many architects and graphic designers are laid off each year in a normal economy? what is a normal economy? it's difficult to put things in context. NPR tells us things are worse these days on this artistic middle class, the working artists. the celebrity artists are doing fine and the starving artist will always exist. when we think of artist, we usually think of singer, dancer, painter, sculptor, writer -- the obvious artist, you know. but there are dozens of thousands of creative workers sort of stashed away here and there in marketing, book design, architecture, magazine editing, freelance writing. how are they doing, really? and it is any worse than usual?