The Resilience of Creativity

The U.S. Copyright Office has released The Resilience of Creativity: An Examination of the COVID-19 Impact on Copyright-Reliant Industries and Their Subsequent Recovery. The study examines the impact and subsequent recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of employment, revenues, and creative outputs in copyright-reliant industries. It uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census, and U.S. Copyright Office pertaining to eighteen industries that produce the types of works registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.


The report reveals:

  • As a whole, copyright-reliant industries experienced a substantial downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, but the effect was decidedly smaller than that on the broader U.S. economy.
  • Copyright-reliant industries, as a whole, recovered from the pandemic-induced downturn substantially quicker than the broader U.S. economy.
  • The pandemic impact on employees was substantially larger than the impact on copyright-reliant firms (which is consistent with the experience of non-copyright reliant industries).
  • The pandemic effects were significantly varied among industries.