Middle Class Vs. Creative Class: Where Do You Fit In?

In the artist's economy, it can be challenging to build your career during uncertain times. Here's why you should do it anyway.

Photo by Caroline Veronez on Unsplash

“It’s a strange time for the U.S. economy” according to Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

I would argue it’s an even stranger time to be a creative working professional. I’ve talked openly in this newsletter about losing quite a bit of my writing work to AI. I’ve been looking for more long-term writing work and gigs. While I’ve made it to final rounds, the competition is fierce right now. My husband is also a working artist (he puts permanent art on people’s bodies, check him out here).

Our income fluctuates. We exist in a part of the economy that rarely shows up in income bracket charts. Are we middle class? I would say, no, we are artists.

Artists are a unique breed because some creatives are quite successful, while others struggle for years. Many of us ebb and flow with our income.

A recent CBS News study found that about 31 percent of Americans are now considered upper middle class, which is the largest economic group in the country, nearly triple what it was in 1979. Dual-income households and professional gains for women have fueled a lot of that climb. On paper, the American Dream is still chugging along, as more people are earning more money than ever before.

And then there’s us.

Our household doesn't map neatly onto charts. Some months we're comfortably fine and put some money away for rainy days. Other months we feel the crunch. The thing about a creative income is that it doesn't arrive on a schedule. A great month for my husband might be a slow one for me. A writing contract I was counting on evaporates. A client postpones. You learn to hold plans loosely.

What nobody tells you about choosing an artistic life is that it’s less a decision you make once and more one you keep making, every year, every slow season, every time you've thought about getting a “day job.”

Making it as an artist isn't a finish line. It's more like a practice. You get better at the work, better at finding the work, and better at surviving the gaps between the work.

My husband has spent years building something singular. The kind of art he makes, the permanent, skin-deep kind, requires trust that takes time to earn. His clientele didn’t appear overnight. He built his business appointment by appointment, one piece of work leading to the next, a reputation assembled slowly and carefully. That's the unglamorous reality of most artistic careers. It’s an ongoing progression that hopefully builds.

For me, the challenge right now is different. The writing landscape has shifted faster than I could have anticipated. I’m talented. I have experience. I make it to final rounds. And still, the right fit hasn't materialized yet. That’s a hard sentence to write, but it's an honest one.

Creative work asks you to keep believing in yourself through long stretches of rejections and “no thank you’s.”

Another dimension to the artist's economic reality that doesn't get talked about enough is who gets to try in the first place.

Research from the UK’s Sutton Trust found that younger adults from working-class backgrounds are four times less likely to work in the creative industries compared to their middle-class peers. Top-selling musicians are six times more likely than the general public to have attended private school.

The creative world presents itself as a meritocracy with the most talented rising and the rest figuring it out, but the data tells a different story. It’s a field where the people with the most financial cushion to absorb years of uncertainty are the ones most likely to stay in it long enough to succeed.

That’s not just a U.K. problem.

Think about what it actually takes to “make it” as an artist in the U.S. You need time, years of it, to develop a craft before it pays reliably. You need the ability to work for low or no pay while you build a reputation. You need to survive the slow seasons, the dry spells, and the pivots.

My first job at Mother Jones magazine payed a $100 a month stipend. I financed it by working at a law firm for two months before I started, along with a lifelong savings account I built from babysitting in high school and college.

A life in the arts is dramatically easier if you have some kind of money behind you, or a safety net you can fall back on, or parents who modeled what a creative career looks like. Or in my case parents who paid for college, so I wasn’t swamped in student loans when I started my career.

I think part of why I have lasted so long as a writer is sheer stubbornness, the ability to budget, and the knowledge that making it as an artist isn’t about a single breakthrough. It’s about building something sustainable enough to still be standing when the slow months end. I jump from gig to gig, happy to pay my bills and hopeful that each opportunity will open another new door. It’s always a mixed bag. I have taken jobs for a good paycheck. I’ve said yes to gigs that offer a little more shine to my resume, as well as jobs that I do for the love of writing.

What’s made it possible is ruthless practicality in the corners of life that don’t require creativity. We went down to one car during the pandemic and never looked back. We eat most of our meals at home. We keep a loose monthly budget that we talk about regularly and without shame. We don't deprive ourselves of joy, but we’ve gotten good at knowing the difference between wants and needs. That clarity is its own kind of freedom.

The CBS News research notes that while more Americans are earning more than ever, many still feel financially stretched, particularly in the areas of housing, healthcare, and education, costs that have far outpaced inflation.

That tension is real for us too. We don’t enjoy employer-sponsored health insurance. We don’t get paid leave when we’re sick or want to take a vacation. We’ve made peace with being renters instead of owning a home. When there’s a windfall, we usually stuff it away into our savings rather than making spontaneous splurges.

I think another big reason so many households feel stretched today is the fact that we are drowning in ads. They are on our phones, in our feeds and streams, and on billboards and shopping carts. Most people are exposed to between 6,000 and 10,000 ads per day, compared to about 500 in the 1970s, according to research. While we may be able to ignore 90 percent of those ads, we still get the message that the only way to participate in society is to buy stuff.

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What you build as an artist is yours to keep. I love my work. It challenges me. It keeps me going. It’s fulfilling and fun to talk about, both the challenges and the rewards. I refer to unexpected gigs or referrals as “email magic,” and sometimes I just ask the universe to send some my way.

The artists who make it aren’t always the most talented. They’re often just the ones who found a way—financially, emotionally, practically—to keep going. They made the unglamorous decisions: the shared car, the cooked meals, the honest budget conversations at the kitchen table. They learned to separate their worth as artists from the slow months and the near-misses and the jobs that went to someone else.

I’m still learning. Some days I’m better at it than others. But I’m still here. Still working. Still refusing to let the hard months be the final word.

In a strange economy, for a creative professional, that might be the whole definition of making it.

When I feel down, I go to this video from Krista Vernoff. It reminds me why I chose this life, and why I’d choose it again.

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How about you? Do you identify as part of the artist’s class? What keeps you going creatively when times feel tough?