The creative economy workforce can be thought of as having three segments: creative workers in a creative industry (specialist creatives); creative workers in a non-creative industry (embedded creatives), and non-creative workers in a creative industry (support workers). Drawing on data from the Labour Force Survey for the period 2011-2019, we show for the first time that the UK’s creative workforce is more dynamic in geographic areas recognised as creative clusters. Creative clusters – which are defined as agglomerations of creative industries businesses that are competing and collaborating with each other – have become a key focus for UK industrial policy in recent years. Across all three segments of the creative economy, we see a higher rate of job change in creative clusters than elsewhere. This apparent cluster effect is weaker among the non-creative workforce, although still visible, especially among STEM workers. Workers in the creative economy who change jobs are less likely than other workers to change occupations or industries and again this is more pronounced in creative clusters. Where creative economy workers do change occupation, those in creative clusters are more likely to remain in creative occupations and industries.
Multivariate analysis, which controls for differences in workforce composition that might explain these patterns, suggests the cluster effect for occupations is strongest for embedded creatives and for industries is strongest for support workers. When considering ‘distance’ travelled in occupational space by job-changers, the cluster effect is only seen for support workers; those in a creative cluster are more likely to remain in the same occupation and less likely to enter an occupation that is only loosely related.
Taken together, the findings provide indicative evidence that creative clusters may support thick creative labour markets and embodied knowledge spillovers, which suggests that policymakers may be right to prioritise investment in them. The results also point to important variations in workforce dynamics between different parts of the creative economy.