The LA County Arts Commission has recently released a study detailing the benefits nonprofit arts and cultural organizations provide to the economy throughout the Los Angeles County region. Bronwyn Mauldin, Research and Evaluation Manager, utilized CDP data to help answer important questions as emerging research finds the arts make a major contribution to the American economy. The report specifically analyzes aggregate salary data, which calculates averages per organization and
median averages across organizations to detail growing salary trends.

Salaries in LA County constituted 39 percent of the $678.7 million that 1,106 California arts nonprofits spent on salaries in 2011. This is just one of the many facts cited throughout the study that reiterates the robust arts ecology and creative economy of LA County. As this study included the years during the recession, we can hope that with the economy slowly improving, these findings will provide an opportunity for arts nonprofits in LA County to review past salary trends and consider where they wish to go in the future.

Read the full report.