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Study Says New Orleans is the Best City to be An Artist

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While creative professionals might flock to Los Angeles or New York to try and make it big, a study by SmartAsset, a personal finance website, says that New Orleans is the number 1 city for working creative types. The study, which NOLA.com posted about, says creatives, including painters, musicians, choreographers and actors, should consider a move here.

The study looked at 176 of the country's largest cities, and developed the ranking based on two main categories: cost of living and the concentration of residents working in a creative field (the study analyzed 28 creative professions). According to the study, New Orleans' cost of living is 98.4 percent of the national average and it has 161.1 creative workers for every 10,000 workers. And these workers aren't just musicians: The study says New Orleans has 1,900 full-time actors and actresses, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic data.

However, the study uses "artist" kind of broadly: The occupations included in this study include everything from what you'd traditionally consider artists, like painters and dancers, to fields that are tangentially art related, but higher paying, like architecture and interior design. The study also includes "sports and related workers" for some reason. So, life may be great for an architect or sports person in New Orleans who has a cheap place to live, but what about an actor who gets work inconsistently?

· New Orleans ranked top U.S. city for creative types [NOLA.com]