In March, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) announced a 3.4% increase in the Wage Price Index (WPI) over the year to the March quarter 2025. What that means is that all skilled and unskilled workers get an extra 3.4% in their pockets to help ward against general inflation.
Did artists feel it? I am guessing not.
While some artists, lucky enough to pick up work on the side, will receive that national Wage Price Index (WPI), the majority of sole-trader artists and creatives hustling for jobs on a freelance or contract basis are going to be overlooked by wage indexation.
And, as we all know, putting your prices up in an over saturated, bleeding sector is not going to get you the gig.
Artists & poverty: quick links
Interest rate cuts won’t help artists
While creatives and arts professionals in the workforce benefited from the WPI rise, sole trader artists don’t fall within the catchment of such economic adjustments.
And, with today’s (12 August) speculated interest cut by the Reserve Bank, to be announced this afternoon at the close of its two-day monetary policy meeting, it is believed that mortgage holders / homeowners are likely to be the biggest winners.
Again, largely an impact not felt by artists, who are generally not in a position to buy property, especially if city-based.
According to Creative Australia research, three-quarters of professional Australian artists (74%) live in urban areas, a higher proportion than the general Australian population (73%), with performing artists showing the greatest urban concentration.
This is clearly, driven by the opportunity for work, especially as gig workers. But with rising city rental and costs of living, freelance and sole trader creatives continue to get squeezed, and ignored.
Mission Australia reports that the median weekly rent in Australia is $627 a week (2024), an increase of 8.5% from the year before.
Are our artists living on the poverty line?
From their art alone, the simple answer is yes.
While it feels like every sector is screaming poor, lobbying for salary increases – outside of annual indexes – artists and creatives are again fall between the cracks.
In addition to the WPI, the National Minimum Wage increased on, or after 1 July 2025 by 3.5% to $948 per week or $24.95 per hour, effective at the first pay period.
That pushes the national minimum wage in to a vicinity of $49,296 per annum – double the minimum wage for artist earnings on their creative practice alone.
In April this year, RMIT University with The University of Melbourne tabled a new report that updated the average income from a visual art or craft practice. It found that in 2023-24 the average artist’s income was $13,937, with males sitting at $23,130, female artists averaging at $12,330 and non-binary artists $14,074.
A 2024 report by Creative Australia puts it slightly higher at $23,200 ($446.15 per week).
Read: Shortfall in incomes draining visual arts sector, says new report
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) defines the poverty line as half the median household income.
It should be reminded that in dollar figures (2022), the poverty line in Australia works out to $489 a week for a single adult, and $1,027 a week for a couple with two children. So yes, artists do sit below that benchmark.
How big is the poverty problem for artists?
While the appalling state of wages and fees for artists, arts workers and creatives is a regular topic on ArtsHub, sadly it is a reflection upon the lack of change in sync with the rest of the Australian workforce, that is most troubling.
Creative Australia’s 2024 report has led to no change, as has been with the many reports before it.
According to the 2021 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census, there are 6,793 visual art and craft professionals in Australia. A largely reduced figure. Creative Australia clocks it closer to 47,100. The ABS’s lack of capacity to categorise the catchment of creatives means they are often invisible to the government using these demographics.
Penelope Benton, Executive Director of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), told the ABC earlier this year, ‘The cost-of-living conditions are so bad that people are really struggling. It means people are making a choice: “Do I eat or do I make art? Or do I just walk away and do something else?”’
63% of artists and arts workers in the sector describe themselves as financially stressed, with 52% to 69% (the later CALD artists) saying they are suffering from poor mental health due to the pressures of being overworked and underpaid, in a rising cost of living climate. (RMIT report)
Further, Creative Australia’s reports that 91% of artists and creatives are taken from their practice to try to make ends meet. Their average salary of $23,200 ($446.15 per week) is supplemented by work in other sources to bring that up to an average income of $54,500 ($1,048.08 per week).
That might bump the sector out of poverty, but it has to be remembered that often this supplemented work is within arts institutions in various capacities as contract or casual staff. And, as institutions are increasingly facing funding cuts, the capacity to “hire in” additional staff has also been reduced.
Read: You’re killing me: tax reform for artists is needed now
NAVA has done a lot of work on documenting salaries and wages as an industry benchmark, while Theatre Network Australia (TNA), is currently collating salary and wage data for its biennial sector report.
It is calling for submissions by 18 August.
It is crucial to keep recording this data, to ward off that ‘invisibility’ that RMIT speaks of, and to force our government to ease the situation for artists, especially as the sector is in constant demand to deliver more on less, and the government continues to overlook sole trader creatives.
It is easy for our governments to proudly hold up arts and culture as a mark of our great nation, and yet, with little tax reform or supplemented education for artists, not to mention these indexed adjustments, it’s easy to view their zeal with a tone of hypocrisy.
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