The economic impact of museums in the UK
Aside from the priceless role of preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting cultural and scientific artifacts, museums and galleries are important economic drivers. In 2023, the number of employees in the museum, gallery, and library industry in the UK reached 99 thousand, marking a decline over the previous year but remaining higher than before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. That year, museums and galleries alone contributed to 52 thousand jobs, accounting for roughly seven percent of the cultural sector’s employment in the United Kingdom. When focusing on libraries, archives, and museums’ revenue in the UK, monthly figures indicate that such cultural institutions tend to generate the highest income over the summer period, with August being the most profitable month.Have museums in the UK recovered from the impact of COVID-19?
The COVID-19 pandemic set unprecedented challenges for British museums and galleries. During the first two years of the health crisis, cultural institutions in the UK had to shut down for months. While visits shrunk in 2020/2021 due to the closures, the total number of visitors to government-funded museums in England – including some of the most popular institutions in the country – doubled in 2022/2023 over the previous fiscal year but remained below pre-pandemic figures. Meanwhile, attendance at the National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery, among the most visited free attractions in Scotland, as well as visits to national museums in Wales, also partially recovered without catching up with pre-pandemic levels yet.Although the number of visitors still lagged pre-COVID-19 figures, data on the income from admissions of government-sponsored museums in England showed strong signs of recovery in 2022/2023, being just five percent lower than in 2019/2020. That said, the economic losses caused by the health crisis were still a big burden for smaller institutions and will likely remain the biggest issue to tackle in the near future. For instance, the median economic impact of non-national museums in England, around half of which welcome less than 10 thousand visitors a year, declined by 34 percent from 2020 to 2023.
