UM study rebuts creative-economy tenets

ORONO – A University of Maine researcher has discovered that a growth in the population of creative people in an area doesn’t necessarily lead to a growth in creative economy jobs.

Todd Gabe, an associate professor of resource economics and policy, studied census data on 200 metropolitan areas in the United States between 1990 and 2003. His preliminary findings contradict several key tenets of the creative-economy model outlined in Richard Florida’s 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class.”

Traditional economic models show that people move into areas where jobs are available, whereas the standard creative-economy model has companies moving into areas where creative, skilled workers already live.

Gabe’s study indicates that cities may not need that strong initial presence of creative workers to experience job growth.

“That challenges one of the main assumptions of the creative economy,” Gabe said Thursday.

In Maine, the Bangor metropolitan area was slow-growing in terms of creative individuals in the 1990s, but the city saw a marked increase in creative-sector job growth between 1999 and 2003.

“You can say the same thing about Lewiston-Auburn,” he said.

On the other hand, Portland saw an influx of creative people in the 1990s, but it “didn’t do so well, in terms of jobs” in the years that followed.

Gabe said the job growth may have reached a plateau after the initial influx of people, but, he added, that challenges another tenet of the creative economy.

“The assumption is there are high levels of clustering,” he said, explaining the theory that creative types are drawn to areas where similarly creative individuals live, thus causing further growth in the creative economy. But his study found that the creative economy was becoming more dispersed across metropolitan areas and regions, rather than becoming more concentrated.

Gabe found that the Rocky Mountain, Southeast and Southwest regions had the largest growth of creative talent between 1990 and 2000. But national employment statistics show that between 1999 and 2003, creative-sector jobs were slow to grow in many cities in those regions.

According to Gabe’s findings, the Odessa-Midland, Texas, region had the highest level of creative talent during the 1990s and ranked at the top of employment gains. However, the Sarasota-Bradenton, Fla., area had the second-fastest growth of creative people over the decade but ranked near the bottom in job growth.

Gabe said it was still too early to tell what implications his study might have for Maine’s fledgling creative-economy efforts.

He said he plans to further analyze the data through the summer in hopes of gaining a better understanding of the local factors that foster creative-economy growth.

“Maine’s on the leading edge of creative-economy initiatives,” Gabe said, “and it is the university’s job to inform these policies in any way we can.”