Media make news with best-paid 'creative' jobs

Anyone wanting to make a career in the arts would be best advised to get off the stage and into a classroom, according to Statistics New Zealand figures.

The department's wide-ranging "Cultural Indicators for New Zealand: 2006" shows the leading "creative occupations" to be in the television production or news industries, with media production managers, editors and architects topping the earnings figures.

But while house designers and reporters are enjoying healthy pay packets, the survey shows actors on income levels where others might consider hanging up their tights.

The report is part of an initiative to make statistics available over a range of cultural sectors, and was produced as a joint statistics programme with the Culture and Heritage Ministry.

The statistics - the latest available - are a snapshot of the industry taken from Census figures in 1996 and 2001.

They show median incomes for those in "creative occupations" at $31,100 a year in 2001, but the two top professions in the category - architects and broadcasting/theatrical production managers - earned incomes up to 170 per cent of the median.

Singers were the worst-paid creative types, with a median income half that of the combined creative occupations, despite "popular live music" ranking as the most frequently attended yearly cultural "experience".

The report shows that although book-buying and visiting public libraries are the two most popular "cultural experiences" undertaken each month, authors and critics have yet to reap the financial benefits.

Their incomes dropped about 10 per cent between 1996 and 2001, to just below the median. Despite being the fastest growing category, sculptors and artists were also struggling on a median $15,900 a year.

Clowns, magicians and acrobats were slightly better off on $16,500.

However, those with creative jobs were, on the whole, better off than other workers. Their across-the-sector median income was equal to 112 per cent of the $27,700 median income for all occupations.