Culture as an economic factor
Over 300,000 cultural professionals and a value added of 15 billion Swiss francs or 2.1 percent of GDP: these are the most important findings from the new statistics of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) on the cultural industries in Switzerland.
In 2019, there were 312,000 people in the Swiss labor force who are "cultural professionals" in the broader sense. This figure corresponds to 6.3 percent of the working population in Switzerland. In an international comparison, this puts Switzerland at the top end of the table, together with countries such as Iceland, Malta, Estonia, Luxembourg and Finland. A third of cultural professionals work outside the cultural sector. At 51%, the proportion of women in the workforce in 2019 was higher than in the economy as a whole (47%). In 2019, 28% of employed cultural professionals were also self-employed, which is significantly more than in the economy as a whole (13%).
While the median gross monthly wage in the economy as a whole was CHF 6857 for men and CHF 6067 for women in 2018, male cultural workers in the cultural sector earned CHF 7356, while women earned CHF 6088. This is around 17.2 percent lower; in the economy as a whole, it is 11.5 percent less.
The synthesis statistics are based on surveys conducted by the FSO. It includes not only traditional cultural sectors such as cultural heritage or the visual arts, but also architecture and advertising, for example. The cultural industries statistics provide information on both cultural enterprises and cultural professionals.
Original article:
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/aktuell/neue-veroeffentlichungen.assetdetail.14716508.html
