What AI is doing to jobs in creative fields

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Kimberly Adams (0:31)

What AI is doing to the creative labor market.

From Marketplace in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams. There's been a lot of mixed data coming out about just how AI is affecting the labor market. Job gains in some areas, especially around the building of data centers, but losses in some other fields, like in creative industries. An analysis by writer and economist Joey Politano found that the US has lost more than 200,000 jobs in creative industries over the last four years. But Politano recently wrote on his sub stack, Apricotas Economics, that it's hard to know just how much we can blame AI for job loss in creative fields.

Joey Politano (1:12)

In art specifically, it's really tough because people are the most likely to conceal their AI usage. For a variety of PR reasons, people don't like AI art. And so if you're using AI as part of the creative process, people try to conceal that.

Kimberly Adams (1:29)

But he says the clearest evidence of AI's influence is that in-person entertainment is growing while digital arts industries not so much.

Joey Politano (1:39)

Musical theater, plays, that kind of stuff, actually been doing pretty well over the last few years. But something like movies and TV have been doing really badly. It's obviously much easier to try to sneak AI stuff into a movie than it is to try to sneak it into a play.

Kimberly Adams (1:58)

The worst hit sector, he says, is movie and sound recording, which includes Hollywood.

Joey Politano (2:03)

Hollywood is like half of the creative sector job losses this year. And to me, that's some evidence that people are using AI as part of the movie and TV show development process in ways that are cutting out jobs that used to go to writers or audio engineers or videographers or CGI artists or any number of people.

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Kimberly Adams (3:16)

It's time for us to take the Marketplace economic pulse, where we check in with reporters from local public media outlets about the economic stories they're following in their communities. This week, we're joined by Jessica Meszaros, a climate and environment reporter at Florida's WUSF, where they've been working on their own series called The Cost of Power, exploring why energy bills are so high in the Sunshine State and how those high prices are showing up in people's lives. Jessica, good morning.

Jessica Meszaros (3:46)

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Kimberly Adams (3:48)

This is affecting people all over Florida, but you and your colleagues focused on one man, Thaddeus Williams. Why did you feel it was important to highlight his story?

Jessica Meszaros (3:58)

We felt it was important to highlight Thaddeus' story because one, he's a renter and electric bills don't just impact homeowners, it impacts everybody, people who rent, anyone who lives in Florida and pays an electric bill. He's a 75-year-old retired veteran. He's living off social security and he's also a single dad to an eight-year-old daughter. He pays about 200 to 300 a month for power, and it's his second highest bill next to rent. Let's hear Thaddeus explain what he hears from his community members.

Thaddeus Williams (4:29)

Everybody I talk to, talk about, oh man, my electric bill is higher than it was last month. I know people who just wouldn't even pay the bill.

They just say, well, I'm not going to pay them, and they live in a house with candles.

Kimberly Adams (4:44)

Candles, wow.

Jessica Meszaros (4:45)

Yeah, it's important to note that Thaddeus himself turns off the lights and lives by candlelight to try to save on his energy bill. And he basically says sometimes his efforts don't work and his bill has actually been higher sometimes after using less electricity.