Employment and Economic Impact of Oregon’s Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation Industry
June 17, 2026“La inspiración existe, pero tiene que encontrarte trabajando.”
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” - Pablo Picasso
Summertime often brings school holidays, major sporting events, camping trips, and outdoor music and arts festivals. Recent national employment data showed that the leisure and hospitality supersector accounted for 70,000 of the 172,000 jobs added in May. With numbers like that, it might be the perfect moment to take a closer look at what the leisure sector means for Oregon’s employment landscape and overall economy.
How the Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation Industry Is Organized
The leisure and hospitality supersector is composed of two sectors: arts, entertainment, and recreation; and accommodation and food services.
The arts, entertainment, and recreation sector includes businesses offering cultural, entertainment, and recreational experiences. These establishments produce or host live events and exhibits, preserve and display historical or educational items, and operate facilities that allow people to engage in recreational, hobby, or leisure activities.
Nonetheless, the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector does not include industries such as motion picture and sound recording, or publishing activities like books and literature. These belong to the information sector. We will explore this distinction in more detail in a future article.
Here, we focus primarily on data related to the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector in Oregon, while navigating the challenge that some sources only provide information at the broader leisure and hospitality supersector level. To overcome this limitation, when necessary, we will compare available data for arts, entertainment, and recreation with data for accommodation and food services to help fill those gaps. We also keep in mind that, as part of the leisure and hospitality supersector, the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector is closely connected to accommodation and food services and can be economically interdependent. Cultural tourism is one example: people travel to attend artistic performances or sporting events, visit museums and national monuments, hike nature trails, or stay at campgrounds and hotels along the coast, in the mountains, or in the high desert.
Overall, this series will focus on the workforce whose job is to accommodate others or create activities for people during their non working hours. It’s widely understood that everyone needs time off to restore their energy and focus — whether that time comes during the workweek, on weekends, or on holidays and vacations.
Relevance in Oregon’s Economy
The most recent numbers show that arts, entertainment, and recreation accounts for about 1% of Oregon’s gross domestic product (GDP) and around 9% of the total labor force; the sector remains economically and socio-politically significant for the region.
With a population of 4,250,917, Oregon ranked 28th in 2025, and its real GDP reached $265.9 billion, up from $265.1 billion in 2024. In 2025, the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector contributed $2.5 billion – about 1% of real GDP – while the broader leisure and hospitality supersector, which also includes accommodation and food services, declined to $10.0 billion, or roughly 4% of real GDP. For comparison, the construction sector also represented about 4% of real GDP, contributing $11.0 billion. Other sectors with similar shares to leisure and hospitality include management of companies and enterprises at $9.9 billion, finance and insurance at $11.1 billion, and wholesale trade at $11.8 billion.
When looking specifically at the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector, with its $2.5 billion output and 1% share of real GDP, we find comparable sectors such as educational services at $2.0 billion and utilities at $3.7 billion.
The 2025 data, released in April 2026, shows that output in the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector has recovered from the pandemic era recession, even though it was one of the sectors most severely affected by COVID 19.
As of March 2026, the leisure and hospitality supersector accounts for 10.5% of Oregon’s total nonfarm employment. Within that, the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector employs 1.4%.
Accommodation and food services makes up about 85% of jobs in the leisure and hospitality supersector, while arts, entertainment, and recreation accounts for less than 15%. It’s also important to note that within accommodation and food services, accommodation represents only about 15%, while food services and drinking places make up the remaining 85%.
When looking at arts, entertainment, and recreation employment, we can see that – aside from the pandemic related recession and recovery between 2020 and 2023 – jobs in the industry have continued to grow. By 2024, employment in the sector had already surpassed its 2019 level. The job count reached 29,200 in 2025.
Conclusion
In future articles about the sector, we will explore employment seasonality, industry structure, the role of nonprofit organizations, the impact of inflation, and much more. With the caution of being too close to the subject I’m writing about, I must mention how difficult and subjective it is to quantify this industry.
It is also difficult and subjective to quantify the unique joy of seeing your favorite musician live on stage at a venue or festival, the magic of watching a play in your local theater, the immaterial pleasure of becoming curious about new things during a museum or historical site visit, the invigorating feeling of skiing or hiking, the unique sensation of a sunset at the beach or mountain summit, the smell of a campfire and the sound of your friends laughing, or the labor of creation when you paint or draw or play an instrument.
It’s not easy to quantify nature, history, science, and art, but these things can be some of the best things in life. So maybe arts, entertainment, and recreation is part of the “What Makes Life Worth Living Sector”?