The Datum Report

Occupation 3411 · Associate professional occupations

Artists

Half of full-time artists in the UK earn more than £47,763 a year, and half earn less.

Artists create artistic works using appropriate techniques, materials and media; design artwork and illustrations; and restore damaged pieces of art.

How people enter it

No specific academic qualifications are required although a variety of vocational qualifications, degrees and postgraduate courses are available. Entry can be based upon portfolio work.

What the work involves

• conceives and develops ideas and ways of working for artistic composition
• selects appropriate materials, medium and method
• prepares sketches, scale drawings or colour schemes
• builds up composition into finished work by carving, sculpting, etching, painting, engraving, drawing, etc.
• approaches managers of galleries and exhibitions in order to get finished work displayed
• uses artistic skills to restore damaged artworks
• liaises with writers and publishers to produce book illustrations
• markets and sells finished work directly to customers
• produces works on commission basis for clients

Also called

Animator (hand drawn) · Artist · Illustrator · Portrait painter · Sculptor

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for artists, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 0 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Actors, entertainers and presenters · Arts officers, producers and directors · Authors, writers and translators · Dancers and choreographers · Musicians · Photographers, audio-visual and broadcasting equipment operators