With a powerful community that includes 75,000 supporters, 400 Member Advocates, and over 185 Member Organizations, Arts for LA is committed to connecting arts and culture stakeholders across Los Angeles County. The organization sought to advance its Creative Jobs Collective Impact Initiative (CJCII), which aims to create 10,000 new creative sector job placements over the next decade, by conducting comprehensive research and analysis to inform stakeholder engagement, strategy development, and advocacy efforts. The challenge was to identify and analyze data that accurately reflected the economic and demographic landscape of creative occupations across the region.

CVL Economics partnered with Arts for LA to focus on refining research questions, defining data requirements, and conducting targeted analyses to support the initiative’s overarching goals. Our approach involved a detailed examination of employment trends and the development of 10-year forecasts for salaried, self-employed, and gig workers across over 70 creative occupations. In parallel, we conducted a comprehensive demographic analysis that explored the diversity within the creative occupations by race, ethnicity, gender, among many other characteristics. These insights were presented at a World Café and shared with public officials, ensuring that the data-driven conclusions directly established a foundation for systemic change and equitable development.