Unpacking GDP and Culture in New Brunswick
David Campbell is a Moncton-based economic development consultant and co-host of the Huddle podcast, Insights. The following piece was originally published on his blog, It’s the Economy, Stupid!, on Substack.
Here is an analysis of the latest data on culture and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in New Brunswick. The problem with data like this is that it can end up raising more questions than answers. For example, should we be looking at GDP per capita or culture GDP as a share of the total GDP? I opted for share of total GDP.
On a culture product basis, the New Brunswick economy generated $578 million in GDP in 2021, or 38 per cent less than the country overall relative to total GDP. We rank seventh out of 10 provinces and there has been a four per cent rise in the GDP contribution between 20219-2021.
I have included a “percentage of total cultural GDP” column to show relative impact. For example, New Brunswick generates much more GDP from natural heritage than the country overall but it only represents less than one per cent of total culture GDP.
New Brunswick still ranks low for performing arts GDP, as well as visual and applied arts, relative to the country overall. As I have pointed out before, we generate very little GDP from advertising: 73 per cent less than the country overall and eighth out of 10 provinces. I know people love to tell me this is a small province issue (Ontario generates 5.5 times as much GDP from advertising) but Nova Scotia generates 60 per cent more than New Brunswick on a relative basis.
Who knows now that Brunswick News has been sold off, but as of 2021 the GDP contribution from newspapers was only 13 per cent below the country overall. The film and video sector has the distinction of having the largest gap with the country overall; the sector here generates 88 per cent less relative GDP compared to the rest of the country. This is in large part a consequence of government funding. Nova Scotia generates more than 5X more GDP from film and video but they also dole out millions more in subsidies every year.
The only measure where New Brunswick ranks Number 1 in the country is the amount of GDP allocated to governance, funding, and professional support to culture. This will be controversial because other data indicates government doles out less cash for culture than most other provinces and yet the amount of GDP allocated to this category is much higher than the country overall.
At this stage, I can’t do a deeper dive on that but it certainly is an outlier.
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