Arts-related businesses were defined as those whose employment consisted significantly of people who would classify themselves as a type of artist, such as advertising agencies, and those which provided services or goods to enterprises with a significant arts-related employment base, such as photo supplies and equipment companies.
Based on Dun &Bradstreet data, there are 105,165 arts-related jobs in Illinois.
80% or 84,156 are in the Chicago area, "an extraordinary concentration... not surprising given the city's historic role as a national advertising and architecture business center."
An unexpectedly large percentage of Chicago arts-related jobs are in the city's suburban outskirts, in addition to the more predictable concentrations of such jobs in downtown Chicago.
The leading suburbs for arts-related jobs are Inverness-O'Hare, Northbrook, Woodale- O'Hare, Park Ridge, Lake Bluff and Orland Park. The employment there is new, not migrated from the inner city.
Only a few geopolitical areas other than Chicago can generate large numbers of arts related jobs, in relation to their populations. They are Peoria, Rockford, Springfield, the Quad Cities and Champaign-Urbana.
"Arts-related enterprises have an inherent economic tendency to cluster or concentrate in tight geographical spaces. Arts-related businesses want supporting arts-related enterprises to be close at hand geographically."
The top industries for arts-related job creation in Illinois are advertising agencies, commercial art and graphic design, architectural services, photographic studios, video tape rental, commercial photography, and motion picture and video production.
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