If you’re a New Yorker and it seems as if you’re running into more film and TV shoots on the streets of Brooklyn, discovering more Gotham-based art galleries, and meeting more fashion-tech types based in New York City, it’s not your imagination.

A “Creative New York” report released Tuesdayfrom the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank, revealed that the number of jobs in the city’s “creative sector” has jumped over the past decade, even as growth in traditional employment sectors such as law and banking have stagnated.

In 2013, New York’s creative sector employed 295,755 people, which works out to be 7 percent of all jobs in the city. Creative jobs increased 13 percent compared to 2003, according to the report. The city is now home to 14,145 creative businesses and non-profits, up 18 percent from a decade ago, and it leads the nation as a hub for creatives, with 8.6 percent of all creative sector jobs in the United States, up from 7.1 percent 10 years earlier.

Chalk one up for New York in the competition with Los Angeles, which has, according to a recent New York Times report, been luring more New York creatives of late, with its promise of lush gardens and backyard dinner parties, captured in Instagram photos.

In the past decade, New York City overtook Los Angeles County as the largest creative business cluster in the United States, the Center for an Urban Future report found. In 2003, L.A.’s creative business employment totaled 207,293, compared to 188,033 for New York City. But in 2013, New York’s total 216,110 (this doesn’t include self-employed or creative working in non-creative jobs) exceeded that for Los Angeles (202,072). From 2002 to 2011, total spending by film and television productions in New York nearly doubled, from $2.3 billion annually to $4.5 billion, and the number of television shows produced here rose from 41 to 91.

Employment grew 12 percent overall in the city, but in film and television production employment levels soared by 53 percent over the past decade, while architecture grew by 33 percent, performing arts by 26 percent, advertising by 24 percent, visual arts by 24 percent and applied design by 17 percent, all outpacing the city’s job growth in general.

That doesn’t mean New York City doesn’t face challengers. The report notes that a growing number of cities — from Shanghai and Berlin to Portland, Ore., and Detroit — are aggressively cultivating their creative economies and posing a legitimate threat to the Big Apple. One of the biggest challenges for creative types is the city’s rising rents, and affordability challenges that city creative types have warned will drive writers, actors, and artists away. One of the report’s key recommendations is providing affordable work and rehearsal spaces for artists, housing for artists, and financial backing for the type of collaborative working spaces these businesses favor.

The quest for affordable space is reflected in the reports finding that the majority of the creative job growth is not happening in Manhattan, which has the highest rents, but in the other boroughs. Manhattan still hosts more than 240,00 creative workers, but its growth has slowed to 10 percent over the last decade, the report found.

The report found the number of creative firms and nonprofits in Brooklyn rose 125 percent over the last 10 years, followed by a 99 percent increase in the Bronx and 50 percent gain in Queens. Still it notes Brooklyn rents are getting close, behind only San Francisco and Manhattan now.

The number of fashion designers is actually down in the city to 6,200 in 2013 from 6,262 in 2003, but the Silicon Alley tech boom has seen increased ties between fashion and technology industries in areas such as 3-D printing and wearables, report author Adam Forman told Women’s Wear Daily.

Three city colleges known for their fashion programs — New School’s Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute and Fashion Institute of Technology — need to work together and share resources to improve their research and development, by creating well-researched labs and investing in joint incubators, Forman said. “To continue to lead the charge, the city’s design schools are going to have to be better about coordinating their efforts.” Forman told WWD.

http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/06/24/nyc-la-creative-class-job-differences-tv-film.html