Uh Oh! Manila Just Ranked as One of the Worst Cities for Creative Professionals

Living in Manila is tough, but living in Manila as a creative professional is even tougher—among, well, many other professions, really. Just take a look at the lack of support for Filipinos in the creative economy, as solidified by a new report.

Manila has been ranked as the fifth worst city for creatives to live and work in, according to B2B performance marking company Business Name Generator. This can range from graphic designers, choreographers, musicians, writers, photographers, game artists, and everything in between.

How Manila’s creatives fare to the rest of the world

The research looked at the available creative roles and the corresponding salaries, the individual cost of living, and the happiness score by country. The number of conducive environments for creativity such as museums, art galleries, green spaces in each city was also taken into account.

Compared to other countries in the bottom 10, Manila had the most number of creative roles at 14,644, but it also had the lowest monthly salary at U.S. $470. Green spaces and museums don’t even come close in count to its other competitors, with only 17 and 22 in the city, respectively.

   

Payscale has identified creative directors, web content managers, and user experience designers as the most lucrative creative roles in the Philippines. 

Meanwhile, the best city for creatives is Tokyo with an 8.0 score, followed by London with a 5.4 score and Paris with a 5.1 score. Singapore is the highest in Asia at fifth place with a 4.8 score.

   

In 2022, the Republic Act No. 11904 or the Philippine Creative Industries Development Act was passed to provide enabling policy and governance framework to develop the Philippine creative industries to become globally competitive. We can only hope to feel this change soon.

According to the United Nations, the creative economy will represent 10% of the global GDP before 2030—with a projected global valuation of U.S. $985 billion in 2023—but we're still to see how the Philippines will contribute.