Cyprus likes to promote itself as an island of history and heritage, but it falls below the EU average when it comes to the number of people employed in the culture sector.
Cyprus ranked towards the bottom half of the EU – although higher than Greece (3.2%) – with 3.5% of the workforce employed in the cultural field.
Nevertheless, Cyprus was among the top countries for an increase in the percentage of people employed between 2012-2017. There was a 0.5 percentage point increase of those employed in the culture industry going from 3% to 3.5%.
In 2017, around 8.7 million people in the EU were working in a cultural sector or occupation. This group of workers represents 3.8 % of the total number of people in employment.
In the individual EU Member States, the percentage of people employed in culture in 2017 varied from 1.6% in Romania to 5.5% in Estonia, with most lying between 3% and 5%.
In individual countries, the percentage of people employed in culture in 2017 varied from 1.6 % in Romania (bottom of the list) to over 5 % in Estonia (top of the table).
The EFTA countries (Iceland, Switzerland and Norway) all had percentages above the EU average, while the candidate countries (Montenegro, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey) had shares below the EU average.
The evolution of the share of cultural employment in the total employment between 2012 and 2017 varied among countries.
While in the majority of countries the slight increase or stagnation of this percentage was observed, in some others a slight decrease was noticed (in Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Hungary and Finland).
With around 155,000 more cultural jobs in 2017 than in 2012, the United Kingdom accounted for almost 30% of the total increase in cultural employment in the EU, followed by the contribution of Spain (22%).
Spain was the country with the largest relative increase in the share of cultural employment, by 0.5 percentage point (from 3.1 % to 3.6 % of total employment).
The term 'cultural employment' relates to employment in economic activities such as: creative arts and entertainment activities, libraries, archives, museums, publishing of books, periodicals; printing programming and broadcasting activities; motion picture, video and television programme production, sound recording and music publishing activities, specialised design activities.
Cultural employment also includes occupations such as writers, architects, musicians, journalists, actors, dancers, librarians, handicraft workers or graphic designers.
