Should I stay or should I go? Early stages in performing artistic careers

Abstract There is extensive literature suggesting that artists face a trade-off between unfavorable wages and the opportunity to practice their art. This trade-off often leads to abandoning artistic careers for more stable jobs, particularly among younger artists with precarious conditions and urgent income needs. This paper analyzes selected career trajectories of young Italian performing artists (aged 16–30) using survival analysis and leveraging a unique administrative dataset. Although our analysis is explorative in its nature, it provides a sketched profiling of the trajectories of young workers venturing into performing artistic professions. Music is the artistic field with the highest career survival rates, the overall performing arts sector remains precarious, with limited long-term prospects and modest returns on human capital investment. Nevertheless, this is partly mitigated by the fact that those leaving performing artistic careers often transition into highly skilled professions, particularly in the case of musicians.