Artists across America continue to struggle with a persistent problem: their work isn't considered a "real job." This sentiment echoes through studios, rehearsal halls, and kitchen tables nationwide, reflecting a quiet frustration that creating art rarely earns the legitimacy or financial security given to other professions. Despite America's celebration of creativity, the country systematically neglects the people who produce it, forcing artists to navigate a system that treats their calling as a personal gamble rather than a legitimate profession worthy of support.

The numbers tell a stark story about artistic careers in America. About 2.4 million Americans work as artists, representing roughly 1% of the workforce in 2019, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This figure includes people whose primary jobs fall within artistic fields such as musicians, designers, writers, actors, architects, and visual artists. However, this likely undercounts the true number, since many artists hold non-arts jobs to support their creative work.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the artistic workforce was already shrinking. Between 2017 and 2019, formal employment in these fields dropped from 2.48 million to 2.4 million workers, a quiet contraction that reflected diminishing opportunities and growing instability across creative industries. When the pandemic hit, this slow decline became a collapse, with the arts economy shrinking by 6.4% in 2020 - nearly twice the overall U.S. decline rate - and more than 600,000 jobs disappearing.

For artists, the pandemic didn't create new problems but rather exposed how little of the nation's safety net actually reached them. Health insurance serves as a prime example of this gap. While most artists have insurance coverage, roughly 20% purchase it independently, compared to about 10% of all U.S. workers. The Affordable Care Act's expansion of individual plan access significantly improved artists' coverage rates, demonstrating that good policy can make a real difference for this workforce.

Even this modest progress now faces threats. With enhanced marketplace subsidies set to expire and ongoing government funding disputes, individual premiums under the ACA could more than double for many enrollees next year. Education doesn't provide much protection either, despite artists being among the most educated groups in the labor market. About two-thirds hold at least a bachelor's degree, but their earnings don't rise as much with each education level as other professionals experience.

Research reveals that even artists with graduate degrees earn lower pay and face sharper income swings than workers with similar education in other fields. Artists almost by definition juggle multiple roles to make ends meet. In 2019, about 8% held more than one job compared to 5% of all workers, and roughly 30% worked part-time across different types of employment. Many combined teaching, freelance projects, and contract gigs to piece together something close to full-time work.

Self-employment occurs far more commonly among artists than other workers, but many choose independence not because they crave entrepreneurship but because it's their only available option. The top industries employing artists include professional and technical services, arts and entertainment, information, and retail. This means artists often move between arts and non-arts jobs, teaching during the day or working service shifts at night, just to keep their creative practice alive.

The fundamental problem lies in how U.S. labor laws operate. Most labor protections - health insurance, paid leave, workers' compensation, and retirement benefits - tie to full-time W-2 employment, but few artists work that way. They rely on gigs that don't fit existing systems: short-term contracts, limited-run productions like musicals or film shoots, and one-off project fees. Because employers don't pay into unemployment funds for contractors or freelancers, most artists remain ineligible for unemployment insurance.

Copyright law presents another challenge, originally written with publishers and record labels in mind, leaving visual artists without royalties when their work gets resold. Current copyright law faces new challenges as artists and record labels claim their work was used to train artificial intelligence models without permission, while tech companies argue these tools will democratize art-making. The tax code adds insult to injury, allowing collectors to deduct the full value of donated artwork while limiting artists themselves to deducting only material costs.

Public arts funding, from the New Deal's Federal Art Project to the National Endowment for the Arts creation, has come in brief bursts but often gets cut first during economic downturns. These examples reveal a century-long pattern: the U.S. celebrates art while neglecting artists. Instead of treating creative work as legitimate labor, the country's policies fail to offer artists stability or protection.

Some countries demonstrate better approaches. South Korea introduced its Artist Welfare Act in 2011 and expanded it in 2022, creating mechanisms for income stabilization, insurance coverage, and protection against unfair contracts. Such examples prove that insecurity isn't an inevitable feature of artistic life - it's a symptom of policy choices. As one artist explained, "I wish this country supported artists. Look how good it could be if culture was celebrated."

A more coherent approach would treat the arts as part of the nation's labor system, not an afterthought. Policy changes could require benefits like healthcare, unemployment insurance, and retirement savings to be portable, following workers rather than employers. Laws could protect freelancers from late or missing payments, similar to New York's Freelance Isn't Free Act. Tax and copyright policies could give artists the same profit opportunities from their work that investors and corporations already enjoy.

Many European countries implement this through droit de suite laws, granting visual artists small royalties each time their work gets resold, ensuring creators, not just collectors, benefit from their art's long-term value. Designing policies around how artists actually work - project by project, contract by contract - would enable more people to build sustainable arts careers while making the sector more inclusive by drawing talent from all social classes rather than only those who can afford the risk.

Policy change requires a fundamental mindset shift. Instead of asking artists to justify their worth by proving they drive tourism, raise property values, or fuel innovation, society should start from the right to choose creative work. The ability to select one's occupation freely and make a living doing meaningful work is, for many Americans, as fundamental as freedom of speech. Yet U.S. workforce policy structure makes that choice nearly impossible for many artists, treating them as special cases or economic tools rather than workers exercising a basic human right - the right to choose their work and make a living through work that gives life meaning.