The New Labor Landscape for Aspiring Creative Professionals

Daniel Grant, the go-to authority on the business of being an artist, recently published a fascinating essay, “The Art of Usefulness: Inside the Complicated World of Studio Assistants.” This piece is valuable not only for budding artists but for anyone who is interested in the role of internships and assistantships as stepping-stones into careers as creative professionals.

Grant’s basic point is that these roles vary wildly in quality, compensation and outcomes. Not all assistantships offer mentorship or artistic growth. Many studio assistants do menial labor—cleaning, organizing, packing—without meaningful creative engagement. Some are subject to workplace abuse. It’s been claimed, for example, that the English artist Damien Hirst outsourced entire works to assistants.

Grant contrasts today’s assistants with their historical counterparts, the apprentices, who were contractually trained and groomed into full-fledged artists. While echoes of mentorship persist, many contemporary assistants are hired more for manual labor or technical skills, with no promise of instruction or career development.

According to Grant, some artists like Frank Stella, Susan Schwalb and Mark Tribe rely heavily on assistants, but their relationships tend to be professional rather than personal. Grant’s takeaway: Don’t romanticize assistantships. Yes, some provide opportunity, but others are exploitative and many are menial. While a few assistants benefit from proximity to power, most do invisible labor with little recognition.

Grant also subtly critiques the blurred ethics of large-scale art production, where big-name artists rely on unseen labor to fabricate works they will claim as their own. This raises deeper questions about authorship, originality and fairness—issues not unique to visual art but present across creative industries. The art world, like many other fields, relies on invisible labor, and those who perform it are only rarely recognized.

Professional success in creative fields is, in the end, a product of chance and connections. The romantic myth of the gifted assistant rising to stardom survives because it occasionally comes true—but for most, the reality is far more utilitarian.

What the Heck Is a Creative Professional?

Many college graduates—especially those with degrees in the humanities, arts, media studies or communications—aspire to enter the amorphous world of creative professionals.

Unlike students in clearly delineated fields like engineering, nursing or accounting, these graduates face a job market where roles are loosely defined, pathways are nonlinear and success depends as much on networking, hustle and timing as on credentials.

The category of creative professionals encompasses a vast and varied terrain: freelance writers, graphic designers, editors, content creators, social media managers, filmmakers, animators, musicians, photographers, arts administrators, game designers, copywriters, museum workers, marketing associates and more.

Some roles are embedded in companies (in advertising, branding, media production), while others are entrepreneurial or gig-based.

But what makes this group amorphous is not just the range of roles. It’s the fact that many of these jobs don’t have clear entry-level positions and rely heavily on connections and portfolios. Nor is it easy to locate job openings. Not only are these jobs precarious, with low pay, limited benefits and few clear growth trajectories, but they require self-branding, freelancing and juggling multiple part-time gigs.

The Gigification of Creative Labor

The romantic image of the creative professional—free-spirited, self-directed, thriving on inspiration—has long concealed the economic and structural realities of pursuing a career in the arts and media. For today’s college graduates who aspire to work in film, publishing, design, music, digital media or other creative sectors, the terrain is far less glamorous and far more uncertain.

Their challenges are not unique but are emblematic of deeper transformations reshaping the 21st-century labor market. In an era marked by gigification, the erosion of stable entry points and the increasing importance of social capital, aspiring creatives are navigating a world of work defined less by ladders than by lattices, portfolios and side hustles.

Long before Uber drivers and DoorDash couriers came to symbolize the gig economy, creative professionals had already been living in a world of short-term contracts, project-based work and multiple income streams.

Freelance writing, illustration, video editing and even arts education often follow a feast-or-famine cycle, with creators constantly juggling gigs to make ends meet.

Platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Bandcamp and YouTube have made it easier to distribute and monetize creative work, but they’ve also intensified competition and pushed creators to prioritize content volume and algorithmic appeal over depth or development. These platforms demand constant content creation, personal branding and entrepreneurial hustle.

The Collapse of Clear Entry Points

In journalism, the collapse of local newsrooms and the shift to digital-first business models have decimated entry-level reporting jobs. Once-traditional pathways—working a beat, rising to editor—have given way to freelance blogging, newsletter writing or content marketing. Writers for outlets like BuzzFeed, Vice and Gawker faced mass layoffs in recent years despite audience growth, illustrating the volatility of media employment.

In music, artists once relied on record deals for studio time and distribution. Today, they must often self-produce, self-promote and rely on streaming royalties that pay mere fractions of a cent per play. Even high-profile musicians like Taylor Swift have spoken out against exploitative contract terms and the difficulty of maintaining artistic control.

In publishing, editorial assistantships once served as springboards into long careers. Now, many of those jobs are underpaid or outsourced. Entry into major publishing houses increasingly depends on unpaid internships, elite connections or the ability to work in expensive cities without support. Aspiring editors and writers often cobble together freelance gigs, adjunct teaching and grant-funded residencies.

Similarly, graphic designers and illustrators face a flooded marketplace where clients can access low-cost design through Canva templates or $5 commissions on Fiverr. While a few designers rise through agencies or cultivate niche followings on Instagram or Behance, many struggle to find full-time employment with benefits.

In the art world, as Daniel Grant describes in his article on studio assistants, recent graduates often take jobs hoping for mentorship or exposure. Some are fortunate to turn these opportunities into gallery representation. But many more are relegated to menial labor with little visibility, let alone advancement.

The Power—and Limits—of Connections and Credentialing

With few formal entry points, connections play an outsize role in the creative industries. Jobs in film, media and publishing are often filled through personal recommendations, referrals and informal networks.

This favors those with pre-existing access to elite institutions or cultural capital. Graduates of Ivy League programs or specialized M.F.A. programs (e.g., Iowa Writers’ Workshop, RISD or USC School of Cinematic Arts) often find themselves in better positions to land opportunities than those from less connected backgrounds.

The disparities are also geographic. Being in New York, Los Angeles or London matters. These hubs concentrate industry gatekeepers, networking events and cultural institutions. Aspiring creatives in smaller markets face many hurdles simply to get noticed.

The Growing Dysfunction of Academic Credentialing

In a recent Substack post titled “The Professional-Managerial Class Has No Future,” Peter Wei offers a sobering, sharply argued critique of how America’s professional class has become trapped in a self-consuming cycle of institutional dependency.

Wei begins with the Varsity Blues scandal—the 2019 revelation that wealthy parents had bribed college officials and fabricated athletic credentials to secure their children’s admission to elite universities. The irony, Wei notes, is that these parents weren’t trying to buy businesses or invest in their children’s talent—they were paying enormous sums just for the opportunity to pay even more in tuition.

Why? Because in the worldview of the professional-managerial class, education is not just a pathway to opportunity—it is the only viable path. Knowledge, credentials and institutional endorsement matter more than social capital, which is why a degree from USC is seen as preferable to one from Arizona State.

Wei argues that this dependence on elite institutions for status and opportunity has made the professional class uniquely vulnerable. Unlike traditional elites, who can pass down businesses, land or networks, this class has no durable assets to transfer—only a highly contingent form of symbolic capital that must be re-earned with every generation through a costly and competitive credentialing system.

Wei likens this class to giant pandas—unable to reproduce without intervention.

From elite preschools to graduate degrees and unpaid internships, Wei sees a system of “institutional parasitism” that extracts time, money and energy from aspirants, with no guarantee of upward mobility. The result is a bloated, extractive pseudomeritocracy that privileges wealth over talent and inertia over innovation.

Implications for Creative Professions

Although Wei focuses primarily on conventional high-status fields—law, medicine, finance—his insights carry powerful implications for the creative economy, where credentialism is more ambiguous in its outcomes but no less pervasive.

Wei critiques the growing trend of formalizing creative careers through graduate and certificate programs. M.F.A.s in writing or fine arts, film schools, design degrees and other academic programs promise legitimacy and access. But more often, they function as status symbols and revenue streams for universities, not as meaningful gateways into sustainable creative work.

In practice, these programs frequently delay entry into the field, saddle students with debt and shift talent validation from peers and mentors to institutional branding. As Wei might argue, creative credentials offer prestige but little in the way of guaranteed opportunity.

Mentorship and Networks Matter More Than the Actual Degree

Creative careers have long depended more on networks and visibility than on diplomas. The most important variables often include whom you know, who advocates for you and how effectively you can showcase your work. Wei’s insight—that social and relational capital are more durable than formal credentials—is especially relevant here.

Creative professionals frequently get their start through informal pathways: studios, internships, apprenticeships, artist assistantships or digital communities. What these avenues offer is not accreditation, but proximity to opportunity, mentorship and practice.

Wei’s argument helps explain why so many talented graduates flounder despite having “done everything right.” They’ve invested in institutional validation in a field where validation rarely comes through formal channels.

As Daniel Grant has documented, art school graduates can accumulate six-figure debt and still find themselves in low-paid assistantships or unpaid labor, hoping for a breakthrough. Many end up subsidizing the very systems that promised to launch their careers.

Wei’s Call for Alternative Paths

Wei’s broader point is that real security and sustainability come not from deeper immersion in fancy-pancy credential mills but from building independent capital—whether financial, creative or communal. For creative professionals, this means:

• Leveraging digital platforms, such as Substack, TikTok, Patreon and Etsy.
• Developing entrepreneurial skills.
• Forming collectives or cooperatives with other aspiring creative professionals.
• Building long-term relationships with peers, patrons and collaborators.

These forms of capital—unlike credentials—can be scaled, adapted and passed down. They offer autonomy rather than institutional dependence.

Wei challenges the foundational logic of credential-based class reproduction. He suggests that lasting success, especially in the creative fields, won’t come through elite validation but through independence, adaptability and networked collaboration.

Toward New Models of Creative Work

Wei’s essay is more than a critique—it’s a wake-up call. It suggests that many creative professionals have been sold a bill of goods—a narrow vision of success: climb the institutional ladder, get the right degrees, wait for permission. But this path is extractive and increasingly out of reach.

Instead, creative workers—especially emerging artists, writers and designers—need to forge alternative models: ones rooted in craft, community, ownership and resilience. That doesn’t mean abandoning education, but it does mean resisting the illusion that credentials alone will ensure a viable creative life.

In a world where institutions increasingly extract more than they offer, the most powerful move may be to step outside their orbit—and build something of your own.

What Universities Ought to Do

University programs for aspiring creative professionals—whether in writing, design, media, fine arts, filmmaking or performance—have a responsibility to ensure that their offerings are both educationally meaningful and practically valuable. Too often, these programs are exploitative or misleading, promising more than they can deliver. Here are several concrete steps institutions can take to fulfill their mission with integrity:

1. Set clear, honest expectations. Avoid inflated rhetoric. Be transparent about what a creative degree can—and cannot—guarantee. These programs should not be marketed as guaranteed pathways to fame, prestige or financial security. Honesty builds credibility.
2. Publish real outcomes. Share detailed, accurate data on employment rates, average debt, income trajectories and postgraduation paths. Transparency builds trust—and helps students make informed choices.
3. Integrate career education into the curriculum. Creative students need more than artistic technique—they need tools to build sustainable careers. Programs should teach freelance business basics (contracts, invoicing, taxes) and grant writing, budgeting and pitching projects. They should also educate their students about copyright and intellectual property essentials and about branding, marketing and building an audience. Portfolio development starting early, not just at the end. The job is not just to teach skills—it’s to prepare students for a meaningful, rewarding career.
4. Provide real-world experience. Bridge the gap between the classroom and the profession. This means partnering with professionals to create paid internships and mentorship opportunities and hosting public showcases, exhibitions and performances. Offer opportunities for leadership through student-run publications and collaborative studios. Assign project work that mimics client briefs and industry expectations. Follow the example of one of my cousins, who teaches in a leading film program: Have the students create pilots, then show the best to industry professionals.
5. Foster industry connections while students are still in school. Help students begin building a creative network by creating alumni mentorship programs and hosting career fairs and industry mixers. Collaborate with local arts and media organizations. Also, encourage interdisciplinary collaborations—connecting writers with designers and musicians with filmmakers.
6. Offer affordable and flexible credentials. Not every aspiring creative can afford a traditional two-year M.F.A. Institutions should offer more accessible alternatives, including stackable certificates, short-term residencies and continuing education for different stages of a creative career.
7. Support the postgraduation transition. The first year out of school is often the hardest. Universities should offer “alumni launch” fellowships or microgrants and provide continued access to key campus resources—equipment, studios, software and advising—for recent graduates.
8. Prioritize mentorship and community. Creative growth thrives on connection and feedback. To that end, programs should build intentional mentorship structures with faculty, alumni and visiting professionals. They should also support long-term creative communities—like writing circles, critique groups and production collectives—that outlast graduation.
9. Redefine success. Success shouldn’t be measured solely by commercial visibility or gallery representation. Programs should honor diverse career paths in teaching, community arts, arts administration, arts and music therapy, and independent creative entrepreneurship. Help students see themselves not just as individual artists seeking recognition, but as contributors to a broader creative ecosystem.

Universities must resist the temptation to sell prestige and focus instead on empowering students with the skills, networks and resilience to live creative lives—not just earn creative degrees. That means reimagining programs not as talent showcases but as launchpads: places where craft is developed, careers are seeded and communities are built.

The Rise of Precarity and the Myth of Passion

Creative work has long been framed as a labor of love. But this framing often masks a more exploitative reality. The expectation that young professionals should work for exposure, accept unpaid internships or endure grueling hours in the name of passion has become normalized.

Hollywood offers one glaring example. Aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers face a labyrinth of assistant jobs, script reading gigs and “general meetings” with no guaranteed outcomes. The 2023 Writers Guild of America strike underscored how even seasoned professionals struggle to earn a living wage in an industry increasingly dominated by streaming algorithms and franchise formulas.

In digital content creation, influencers and YouTubers appear to bypass traditional gatekeepers—but the reality is a grind of content calendars, brand deals, metric tracking and parasocial labor. Few creators make a sustainable income, and many burn out trying to keep up with algorithmic expectations.

Toward a More Sustainable Creative Economy

Creative professionals have always been dreamers, but dreams alone can’t sustain a livelihood. In an era of precarity and gigification, the creative class is emblematic of broader economic shifts that reward flexibility over stability, connections over merit and visibility over depth.

But this is not a reason for resignation. It is a call to action: to create new structures that honor the value of creative work, to build ecosystems that support risk-taking and reflection, and to ensure that the future of art, storytelling, design and media is not left to those who can afford to wait for luck.

To do that, we must see the creative economy not as a lottery, but as a system that can be shaped—and improved—by collective effort, institutional vision and public investment.