At the conception of CircusTalk in 2015, one of our biggest challenges was finding valid data for the size of the international circus and variety arts sector. This data simply didn’t exist. Europe provided the most tangible benchmarks through some of Circostrada’s and Creative Europe’s data projects. Still, the rest of the world lacked any kind of reliable, publicly available census of the circus and variety sector. 

On the labor market, the size of the gig economy has been notoriously hard to measure accurately. Independent workers are defined differently by different organizations. Some only count workers whose gig work is their primary source of income; some also count workers who supplement their primary income with jobs in the gig economy and those who occasionally engage in paid gigs. CircusTalk’s last survey before the pandemic (2019) revealed that even on a professional platform and career marketplace like ours, only 38.7% of our artist members make a full-time living working in the circus and performing arts sector. The majority of artists supplement their income with jobs outside of the performing arts.  One of CircusTalk’s missions is to provide accurate and diversified data about the international circus sector through free registration via the platform. When members sign up, they complete the...