This briefing paper is an output of a collaboration led by the University of Canberra in partnership with the Australia Council, the City of Sydney, the South Australian Government’s Department for Industry, Innovation and Science and the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.

The paper presents an analysis of embedded cultural and creative activity in Australia, drawing on custom tables of employment data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ five-yearly Census of Australian Population and Housing. It builds on the overview of Australian cultural and creative employment presented in Briefing paper 1 in this series.

Highlights:

• Embedded creatives are people employed in creative occupations outside the creative industries. Greater in number that specialist creatives within the creative industries, it is crucial to acknowledge their role in exemplifying diverse pathways to creative careers and innovating with creative inputs across the economy.
• The relatively high incomes earned by embedded creatives stand out both in comparison to the incomes earned by creative specialists and, even more dramatically, in comparison to other workers in the industry divisions that employ embedded creatives.
• The largest employers of embedded cultural production expertise are the Education and Training and the Public Administration and Safety industries. Librarians and archivists, music professionals, writers and editors and actors and dancers are employed in significant numbers in Education and Training. The Public Administration and Safety industry employed many librarians and archivists and music professionals.