Australian Creative Employment in 2011 - applying the NESTA Dynamic Mapping definition methodology to Australian Classifications

This paper seeks to apply the methodology developed in NESTA’s recent research paper “A Dynamic Mapping of the UK’s Creative Industries” to the Australian system of industry and occupation classifications (as defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics), to establish whether the creative intensity threshold would be the same as the UK’s and to determine if the employment results are an improvement on the previous definition methodology used in Australia - the CCI spine. The changes in the definitions reduced the level of creative employment in Australia (in 2011) by 24,052 from 554,996 to 530,944 people, a reduction of 4.3% when compared to the previous definition. Interestingly, the change in definition actually increased the average annual growth rate in creative employment between 2006 and 2011 from 2.62% to 2.76%, an increase of 5.2%. Based on the evidence, the authors find that NESTA’s Dynamic Mapping definition methodology provides a tighter, more focussed selection of creative industries and occupations that will improve the ability of researchers and policy-makers to measure creative employment