I have no idea about the career paths in the arts, and I am sure they can be very exciting for the truly talented. What I was trying to say, maybe unsuccessfully, is that unless my child has a clear talent in the performing arts and a deep drive to perform, I would discourage them to pursue the arts professionally but treat them as a hobby. Unlike the PA, you can be a middling engineer and still make a good living. But you have to be truly talented to enjoy your art career. This is my very amateurish opinion.
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Folks may be forgetting that besides being a performer, dancer, singer, actor, artist, aka “the talent,” there are hundreds, maybe thousands of jobs that are directly or indirectly related to the talent themselves.
Imagine attending a concert, theater, movie, TV show, film, museum, recording studio, etc., such as writers, creative directors, choreographers, gripping, dancers, talent acquisition, set design, museum curators, social media manager and staff, production assistants, technical directors, marketing, publicity, and on and on.
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Just take a look at any recent movie’s credits… plenty of lawyers, programmers, and other “non-creative” species are usually listed. 
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This is an excellent point. A close friend’s D has always been a very talented artist (drawing and painting). She just graduated with a degree in an environmental design field that will allow her to use her artistic skills. I don’t think she ever considered art in and of itself as a career, but has managed to incorporate it in a way that she finds satisfying.
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in keeping with the last few posts, even though my own kid studied musical theater performing in college, and does do that professionally now, she also works professionally as a writer, composer, and lyricist of original musicals, and as a singer/songwriter (NOT musical theater genre). And while many of her classmates did go onto performing careers, many are also producers, directors, writers, choreographers, composers, singer/songwriters, make up artists, and more. Like my kid, they may have trained as performers, but have careers doing many things in the field.
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And that’s just for the big time in NYC or LA (there’s production in many US cities besides these two), but there are community theaters everywhere and then there’s also your local youth theater.
My oldest did some youth theater, including summer camps when she was young. We even had her take some voice lessons IIRC.
There’s money to be made in the arts, even if you’re not the most talented.
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Years ago I was a looky-loo at an open house. It was painted in such unusual and beautiful colors I mentioned it to the real estate agent, who said that the seller was a set designer at the major opera company nearby.
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Earlier in the the thread, there were some discussions about differences between Canada and US. A study reviewing median earnings by major 5-years after graduation in Canada is at https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2020018-eng.htm . The general patterns seems similar to the US with vocational focused majors generally being higher than humanities majors. However, there are some specific sub-fields that are notably different in Canada than US, such as Criminal Justice major being associated with higher earnings than Computer Science major, or Education and Social Work having higher earnings than Mathematics, or Gender Studies having higher earnings than Economics Some of these differences probably relate to public sector employment being associated with higher earnings in Canada than US. Specific numbers are below:
Median Earnings by Major in Canada: Males, 5 years Out
Mining Eng – $110k
Pharmacy – $105k
Chemical Eng – $90k
Geological Eng – $85k
General Eng – $82k
Nursing – $82k
Electrical Eng – $80k
Mechanical Eng – $79k
Computer Programming – $78k
Criminal Justice – $74k
Computer Science – $72k
Business – $69k
Forestry – $66k
Education / Special Education – $62k
Social Work – $61k
Mathematics – $61k
Gender Studies – $58k
Statistics – $57k
Economics – $54k
Biology – $51k
Psychology – $50k
History – $48k
English – $42k
Philosophy – $41k
Fine Arts – $39k
Music – $38k
Drama – $36k
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My kids had no interest in pursuing careers in the arts, so it was a moot point. We didn’t even need to discuss it. They were in plays and D did piano and dance, but they didn’t have the interest to study it in college, so it wasn’t even mentioned.
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My sights are set very high. God forbid, the kid has to live with roommates or at home for a little while. Not the end of the world.
Nothing wrong with living modestly and not being materialistic. The world would be a much nicer place if we had more people like this and less like the Kardashians.
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There are just as many art directors, graphic artists, fine artists, theater production, cinema/movie people etc who are “middling”. There are so-so people in every field. The idea that you have to be outstanding to make a living in the arts is a fallacy. I think it’s rooted in old ways of thinking.
Since the internet and freelance jobs, there are thousands of jobs and positions literally at someone’s fingertips around the world. Just perfect for artistic people who tend to do more work for hire, or where jobs don’t last 10 plus years. Anyone who has hired a photographer, or a website designer, ad person, mark-up person etc knows what the fees are and how hard it is to find someone.
There are also dozens of fields that didn’t exist in the arts two decades ago. Graphic game designers make a lot, so do many, many others. I have a friend who works for Disney and she started at a huge salary and shares in the success of the movies she works on. Her friends are in related jobs. Most have pretty high incomes and success rates.
I think a lot of the observations about arts being low paid/few successful people/other come from people who aren’t in the arts, or who don’t hire artistic types so they don’t recognize how many people are working in this field.
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Canada is a very different from the US in terms of work, pay, taxes and all the rest. I’ve lived and worked in both and they compare as much as the US compares to any European nation. Of course there are some related points but …
I think comparisons aren’t useful unless someone is comparing the US to Canada for job prospects.
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In this art vs craft debate, I think there is one aspect that needs to be brought out. The craft people (I mean very loosely the STEM and pre-professional crowd) are looking to practice their craft under the umbrella of a larger organization. They don’t want to market their craft themselves. Perhaps they feel unequal to the task. Clearly they may not be good at it.
I think the arts people freelance more of the time than crafts people, and need to do their own marketing, and absorb more of the business risk.
It may be a personality difference apart from being a right brain / left brain difference.
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Do the parents think it was Bowdoin that led her to this lifestyle?
This study is somewhat flawed. A large proportion of Canadian STEM folks immigrate to the US and beyond. Even back in the dark ages, half of my EE class is in the US or has spent time here. Chicken and egg but you can argue that this keeps the lid on pay there. There is something called the TN visa that is renewable indefinitely that allows a variety of university graduates from both countries to work in the other. Vast majority of flow is one way.
In addition, the top kids from any top STEM program look to graduate school in the US. The STEM grad school populace in Canada is dominated by foreign-trained grad students as it is an easy path to Canadian PR.
Typical progression is TN and then GC sponsorship. Non Indian and Chinese born employment based GC petitions are quick to progress.
I should add that the survey is correct and dovetails with what I know but the top STEM talent there simply doesn’t stay there to earn those wages. The top people who stay migrate over to finance/management. Or start their own (RIM).
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I know a bunch of musical engineers from undergrad. They pursued gigs etc, but probably knew they couldn’t make a living from that. There are a lot of folks like that too. I don’t know the extent of their talent in music or engineering.
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In both cases, it’s more of where the jobs are, then a particular choice. People going into STEM often plan to work for themselves ( our STEM side of the family have all worked for very large and famous companies and worked for themselves as well). Most STEM people do work for others as that’s where many jobs are but by no means all. Many are contractors and make more that way.
The arts folks take freelance jobs since arts jobs are often short term. So it doesn’t make sense for a company to hire a professional photographer who works 10 hours a month. But it may make sense for them to hire someone to do coding.
More and more jobs are becoming free lance. Not all are low pay or low skill. In fact, it’s often the opposite. Those who work for themselves have often found they can make more based on their skills sets, whether they be technical or artistic. And some go back and forth between self-employed and big company.
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That reminds me. We didn’t do this in our home, but we know quite a few parents, prior to their kids being born, who hired wall mural artists to spruce up their newborn’s rooms:
And I just googled “how much do wall mural artists make?” and I got the following response:
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That’s actually not a bad salary considering most probably aren’t working anywhere close to 40 hours/week.
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One could make a similar statement about almost any stat posted in the thread. For example, comparing the median salary of Electrical Engineering to English is only useful if someone is debating between majoring in EE vs English, and hardly anyone would be in this group.
That said, as nyc10023 mentioned, a significant portion of Canadian grads do compare working in US vs Canada in certain fields. I posted simply as stats some may find interesting. For example, I find it interesting how much relatively higher Criminal Justice, Social Work, Forestry, and similar are in Canada than in US.
The study is based on tax reported income. It’s my understanding that foreign employer compensation is reported on T4, so I’d expect foreign income would be counted in the study reported medians, unless the grads renounce citizenship.