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How Creative is Houston?

A lot more than most realize. The creative economy is a diverse and broad-based collection of industries—non-profit and for-profit—that employs more than 146,000 individuals in primary and support roles across the ten-county region. In Protected content , creative businesses in Houston had an economic impact of more than $9.1 billion.

That’s the conclusion of a study commissioned by the Houston Arts Alliance and the University of Houston in conjunction with the Partnership. The study, conducted by Economic Modeling Specialists, Inc. (EMSI), an Idaho-based company specializing in analyzing employment data, looked at two aspects of the region’s creative side—industries and occupations.

The study noted that creative workers can be found in non-creative industries (e.g., a graph-ic designer at an oil and gas company), non-creative workers can be found in creative indus-tries (e.g., an accountant at a graphic design company), and creative workers also work in traditional creative industries, (e.g., an architect at a de-sign firm or a curator at a museum). EMSI identified 51 creative occupations (e.g., musicians, authors, actors, artists, librarians, architects, editors, etc.) and Protected content industries (e.g., museums, architectural services, broadcast media, the performing and visual arts, certain manufacturing sectors, etc.).

The study also noted that Houston is underserved by local creative businesses. While demand for creative goods and services total $20.53 billion in Houston, local compa-nies provided only $10.77 billion of that, leaving ample opportunity to grow the local creative sector.

TEXT TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM THE GREATER HOUSTON PARTNERSHIP NEWSLETTER.

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