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Arts, Entertainment, & Design

National Career Cluster · the map of work

Arts, Entertainment, & Design is one of the 14 national career clusters — the U.S. Department of Education's map that divides the whole world of work into broad families, each crosswalked to occupations, education programs, and industries. This cluster spans 64 occupations across 6 sub-clusters, employing about 5,049,810 workers, with a median wage of $61,770.

What's in this cluster

A career cluster is a navigational grouping, not a measured score. The counts below come from the framework's official crosswalk; employment and pay are aggregated from BLS OEWS (national, cross-industry, May 2024) across the occupations in the cluster.

64 occupations
6 sub-clusters
5,049,810 workers (BLS)
$61,770 median pay
149 education programs

Across occupations with wage data, the middle range (25th–75th percentile of occupation medians) runs $47,100 – $76,325. This describes the cluster, not any one job or person.

Sub-clusters

The framework splits each cluster into sub-clusters — tighter families of related work. The count is the number of occupations the crosswalk places in each.

Sub-cluster Occupations
Media Production & Broadcasting 19
Performing Arts 18
Design & Digital Arts 10
Fashion & Interiors 8
Lighting & Sound Technology 6
Fine Arts 5

Largest occupations in this cluster

Exposure quadrant: AI task-overlap percentile vs Median pay AI task-overlap (horizontal) versus median pay (vertical), each as a percentile across all scored occupations, for 36 occupations in Arts, Entertainment, & Design. Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation. Lower overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · higher pay Higher overlap · lower pay Lower overlap · lower pay Tailors, Dressmakers, and Custom Sewers Athletes and Sports Competitors Audiovisual Equipment Installers and Repairers Printing Press Operators Umpires, Referees, and Other Sports Officials Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants Athletic Trainers Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other Audio and Video Technicians Prepress Technicians and Workers Camera Operators, Television, Video, and Film Producers and Directors Managers, All Other Special Effects Artists and Animators Materials Engineers Data Entry Keyers Graphic Designers Interior Designers Editors Technical Writers AI task-overlap percentile → ↑ Median pay
The largest occupations in this cluster with both an AI task-overlap score and a wage, plotted by task-overlap percentile (horizontal) and median-pay percentile (vertical). Overlap measures shared tasks with AI, not automation.

Occupations in this cluster with the most workers nationally (BLS OEWS, May 2024), each linked to its full profile. Employment and pay describe the occupation, not an individual.

Occupation Workers Median pay
Software Developers 1,654,440 $133,080
Managers, All Other 630,980 $136,550
Coaches and Scouts 250,940 $45,920
Graphic Designers 214,260 $61,300
Architectural and Engineering Managers 210,340 $167,740
Merchandise Displayers and Window Trimmers 192,480 $37,350
Producers and Directors 145,270 $83,480
Printing Press Operators 145,110 $45,160
Data Entry Keyers 135,280 $39,850
Web and Digital Interface Designers 111,400 $98,090
Editors 95,480 $75,260
First-Line Supervisors of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services 92,830 $46,900
Web Developers 78,860 $90,930
Audio and Video Technicians 70,080 $54,830
Interior Designers 69,580 $63,490
Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other 64,410 $77,390
Technical Writers 55,530 $91,670
Photographers 51,230 $42,520
Art Directors 50,370 $111,040
Writers and Authors 47,800 $72,270
News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists 41,550 $60,280
Actors 38,800
Musicians and Singers 38,350
Fundraising Managers 36,920 $123,480
Athletic Trainers 28,950 $60,250
Film and Video Editors 28,860 $70,980
Camera Operators, Television, Video, and Film 24,460 $68,810
Broadcast Announcers and Radio Disc Jockeys 23,880 $45,680
Media and Communication Workers, All Other 23,590 $71,770
Prepress Technicians and Workers 23,070 $47,300
Materials Engineers 22,770 $108,310
Audiovisual Equipment Installers and Repairers 22,170 $50,620
Special Effects Artists and Animators 21,280 $99,800
Broadcast Technicians 21,080 $53,920
Fashion Designers 20,910 $80,690
Tailors, Dressmakers, and Custom Sewers 16,290 $40,860
Umpires, Referees, and Other Sports Officials 15,080 $38,820
Entertainers and Performers, Sports and Related Workers, All Other 15,040
Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants 14,960 $34,800
Athletes and Sports Competitors 14,370 $62,360

AI exposure across this cluster

Two published studies estimate how exposed each occupation is to today's AI. The OpenAI "GPTs are GPTs" study rates the share of an occupation's tasks a large language model (with tools) could speed up by half or more; averaged across this cluster it is 31% — 54th percentile of the 14 clusters. The independent Felten/Raj/Seamans AI Occupational Exposure index averages 0.08 here.

Computed across the 58 of 64 occupations in this cluster that carry a published exposure score.

Exposure measures where AI could assist tasks — it is not a prediction that these jobs will be automated. High exposure most often means augmentation (faster work), and many high-exposure occupations are also projected to grow.

Where the work sits

The framework anchors each cluster to one or more NAICS industry sectors — the parts of the economy where this work concentrates.

Education programs that lead here

A sample of the 149 CIP 2020 instructional programs the framework crosswalks to this cluster — the fields of study that prepare people for this work.

  • Acting
  • Agricultural Communication/Journalism
  • Animation, Interactive Technology, Video Graphics, and Special Effects
  • Apparel and Textile Manufacture
  • Art History, Criticism and Conservation
  • Art/Art Studies, General
  • Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management, General
  • Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management, Other
  • Athletic Training/Trainer
  • Audio Engineering Technology/Technician
  • Audiovisual Communications Technologies/Technicians, Other
  • Ballet
  • Brass Instruments
  • Broadcast Journalism
  • Business Administration and Management, General
  • Business and Economic Journalism
  • Business/Commerce, General
  • Business/Corporate Communications, General
  • Business/Corporate Communications, Other
  • Ceramic Arts and Ceramics
  • Children's and Adolescent Literature
  • Cinematography and Film/Video Production
  • Comedy Writing and Performance
  • Commercial and Advertising Art

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

Data compiled June 3, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

Cite this page
Plain

Singulariki. "Arts, Entertainment, & Design." Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Built from O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026. https://singulariki.com/clusters/arts-entertainment-design

APA

Singulariki. (2026). Arts, Entertainment, & Design. Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Retrieved June 7, 2026, from https://singulariki.com/clusters/arts-entertainment-design

BibTeX
@misc{singulariki-arts-entertainment-design,
  title  = {Arts, Entertainment, & Design},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; CIP-2020 2020; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/clusters/arts-entertainment-design}
}

Citations name the underlying public dataset releases — they reflect what this page is built from, not just the URL.