“Paying for Professionalism 2025: A Report on New York City Teaching Artist Compensation & Employment” provides a comprehensive overview of the financial and employment landscape for Teaching Artists in New York City. The report explores various aspects of Teaching Artist work, including compensation models, benefits, career sustainability, and challenges faced by these professionals. The report utilizes data from multiple sources, including the Roundtable’s 2018 “Paying for Professionalism” report, Creatives Rebuild New York’s “Portrait of New York State Artists Survey,” and the Roundtable’s 2024-2025 Teaching Artist Compensation Initiative dataset, to offer a detailed picture of the field and propose next steps for improvement.

Methodology

The report’s findings are based on a secondary analysis of Creatives Rebuild New York’s “Portrait of New York State Artists” dataset (2022) and the Roundtable’s own two-pronged electronic exploratory survey conducted from November 2024 to January 2025. These surveys were iteratively designed to collect current data from individual Teaching Artists (172 respondents) and employing organizations (72 respondents) on compensation structures, practices, rates, and benefits. 

Key Findings

Increased Cost of Living and Stagnant Wages: Teaching Artists in NYC face significant financial challenges, with many earning incomes that are alarmingly low relative to the city’s cost of living. The median individual gross income for Teaching Artists in 2023 was between $35,000 – $50,000, which is consistent with findings from the Roundtable’s 2018 report — despite a 28% increase in the cost of living over the past seven years according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Furthermore, 68% of Teaching Artists reported a household income under $75,000, falling below the median household income in NYC of $76,577 in 2023. 79% of respondents did not feel their Teaching Artist work sufficiently supported living in or near NYC.

Variable Recognition of “Hidden Labor”: A crucial challenge for Teaching Artists is the often uncompensated or under-compensated time spent on essential tasks beyond direct instruction, such as planning, preparation, curriculum development, travel, and administrative duties. This “hidden labor” can significantly erode the effective hourly rate for Teaching Artists and contribute to a feeling of being undervalued and financially strained. While some organizations do offer additional compensation for these tasks, it’s not a universal practice nor is it always sufficient.

Limited Access to Essential Benefits: Access to critical benefits, particularly medical insurance and retirement plans, are lacking across the field. While 88% of Teaching Artists reported having health insurance, only 6% received it through an employer. Barriers to providing benefits include limited and inconsistent funding, the part-time and/or seasonal nature of the majority of Teaching Artist positions, and insurance carrier restrictions that often require a minimum number of weekly work hours for medical coverage. These structural barriers make it challenging for employing organizations to offer robust benefits.

Inconsistent Career Advancement and Wage Growth: Despite 77% of employing organizations reporting that they offer raises to their Teaching Artists, the report indicates that there is no conclusive evidence that Teaching Artists’ wages markedly increase over the course of their careers — even for those with long tenures. While 64% of employing organizations reported offering upward mobility opportunities, these may involve administrative or management positions, which some Teaching Artists view as a lateral move away from Teaching Artistry rather than advancement within their craft. This lack of clear professional growth and consistent wage increases creates a significant barrier to long-term career sustainability within the profession. 

Need for Sustainable, Multi-Year Funding: Systemic issues related to reimbursement-based contracting, rigid government procurement policies that prevent substantial pay rate restructuring, and inconsistent year-over-year funding have a trickle down impact on Teaching Artist compensation — posing challenges to increasing rates and offering more consistent work, while threatening the financial stability of employing organizations. Uncertainty about the state of federal arts and education funding at the time of publication further compounds these issues. 

For a full list of Works Cited, please refer to pages 49 – 50 of the report.

This survey may be a great first step in understanding the best models for Teaching Artistry at arts organizations. If there are healthy case study examples of best practices for Teaching Artist employment — especially from the perspective of working artists in NYC — that could help build recommendations for better pay and/or benefits.

— Representative from Manhattan-based Organization

Materials

Access the report via the buttons below. We also encourage our community to use our Social Media Toolkit to reach out to your network via social media and email and share the report. Link to this website in all posts and emails, and include why you’re passionate about supporting Teaching Artists!

What’s Next

Once our community has had an opportunity to review and reflect on the “Paying for Professionalism Report”, we look forward to hosting a panel to dig into its findings and proposed next steps. Keep an eye out for further details coming later this year! Be sure to sign up for our email list and follow us on social media so you don’t miss the announcement.

The Roundtable is committed to advocating for Teaching Artists and the broader arts education ecosystem. To help unpack the ways in which different constituencies within the field at-large can take action, the report features a series of suggested “next steps” intended to offer ways we can work together to advance the profession (pages 40 – 43). While the chart identifies a few key stakeholder groups (among many more that exist!), we encourage readers to pursue what resonates with them and continue to brainstorm ways in which you can effect change for the Teaching Artist workforce. Community members are encouraged to reach out to info@nycaieroundtable.org with any questions or comments related to the report.

Working [as] a Teaching Artist is increasingly unsustainable for me. [The field needs] to figure out a structure that makes it sustainable… to stay in the field, I need health insurance, job security, and retirement benefits. Without those, I am looking to leave the field.

— Brooklyn-based Teaching Artist

Acknowledgements

The NYC Teaching Artist Compensation & Employment Research initiative is made possible with support by Creatives Rebuild NY (CRNY), a project of The Tides Center, Brooklyn Arts Council, and support from individual donors.

Please consider contributing to our efforts to advance arts education in NYC and to support this essential workforce by making a donation today.

We wish to acknowledge the support and partnership of Gregory Youdan Jr. (Research Consultant) as well as the Roundtable’s Teaching Artist Affairs Committee, Community-Word Project’s Teaching Artist Project, the original authors of the Roundtable’s 2018 Paying for Professionalism report (Heleya de Barros, Kai Fierle-Hedrick, Lauren Jost, and Maya Singh), Dance/NYC, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, New Yorkers for Culture & Arts, as well as Phil Alexander, Courtney J. Boddie, Rebecca Ferrell, Debra Freeman, Paula Heitman, Keith Kaminski, Michele Kotler, Dale Novella Anderson-Lee, Allie Marotta, Kashira Patterson, Leah Reddy, Mary Suk, Kerry Warren, and Helen Wheelock.

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