Economic Impact of the Creative Industry in San Antonio: 2018

Every couple of years I conduct an analysis of the economic impact of the creative industry in San Antonio, so it is time to release the numbers for 2018. The following table shows the economic impacts. The employment in the creative industry in 2018 was 21,086, and incomes amounted to almost $1 billion. The total economic impact as measured by output amounted to $4.0 billion. Once multiplier effects derived from the exports of the industry are taken into consideration, the creative industry supports employment across the San Antonio economy equivalent to 26,684 full-time equivalent positions. The incomes these workers earned totaled almost $1.3 billion, and the overall economic impact was $4.8 billion.

The industry also grew strongly from 2016 to 2018 based on the overall impacts (i.e., including multiplier effects). Employment grew by 7.2% with incomes growing by 15.1%. Overall economic impacts grew 21.4% over this two-year period.

In order to give a sense of the impacts of the various sectors of the creative industry, the following tables shows the employment, income, and output impacts by sector within the creative industry. These are the direct impacts, so they do not include multiplier effects. As has been the case in the past, the sectors with the largest impacts are printing, advertising, and related activities; design and advertising; and performing arts.

Lastly, we always take a brief look at the employment by creative occupation. The figures above are based on definitions by the NAICS industry codes, so the employment in the firms in these sectors includes all workers, regardless of whether or not they are engaged in creative work. However, the creative industry, or rather creative workers, play a somewhat unique role in the economy because they work in a variety of industries, including those that are defined as “creative.” Additionally, the firms in the creative industry support the growth of firms across all industries through the goods and services they provide. Looking at employment by creative occupation highlights these impacts in a very small way. This data indicate that there are 21,984 creative workers employed in all industries across the San Antonio economy.

Summary of the Methodology

The geography used in the analysis was the San Antonio metropolitan statistical area. The employment and income data were provided by EMSI. This is the same data source that has been used in the previous studies of this industry, and it is used because it includes measures of the non-QCEW and self-employed workers. Self-employed artists are a key component of the creative industry who would not be captured by using the data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).

The conversion factors used to calculate the overall economic impacts were calculated using the sales and payroll data by industry from the 2012 Economic Census. The data from the 2017 Economic Census were not yet available at the time the analysis was conducted, which made it necessary to use the 2012 data.

In order to calculate the multiplier effects, the export data for each sector of the creative industry was pulled from the EMSI database and run through the IMPLAN input-output model.