Creative PEC's Seminar Series
What is ‘Psychic Income?’
An exploration of 'psychic income' in creative professions and its relevance to the labor market.
This is an online Zoom Webinar
Nonpecuniary benefits are the intangible rewards that workers receive, such as intrinsic satisfaction from work, that are hard to measure, but can play a vital role in the labour market. The artistic workforce and creative occupations are often associated with characteristics of job satisfaction, flexibility, and creative freedom, directly implicated in these nonpecuniary benefits or "psychic income" from labour.
Yet, labour supply models tend to not feature these non-monetary benefits of creative work. Further, empirical measures of job satisfaction, or “psychic income” for artists are hard to find. In this study, the organisation uses panel data on artists switching in and out of artistic occupations to estimate psychic income. For comparison, they apply the same method to other sorts of workers such as academics, drivers, and accountants. They also discuss the implications of these results for several current debates in the creative sector, for example gig work, non-wage compensation, and basic income.
Doug Noonan is a professor at O’Neill School at Indiana University Indianapolis. He will spreak during this online seminar.