Statistics

Live Music Statistics — United States

Every figure on this page is a released federal observation, or a derivation of released observations that a reader can reproduce from the stored levels. Each carries its reference period, unit, issuing agency, series identifier and the method applied to it. Where a series has published nothing, there is no row: an absent statistic is absent rather than estimated.

These are national statistics for the United States. They describe the price of admission to live and screened entertainment, what households spend on live entertainment, how many people hold payroll jobs in performing arts, and what the promoter and event-operations workforce earns. They do not describe any single concert, artist, venue or market, and no figure here is a Live Index construct layered on top of the published data.

The list is generated from the same stored observations that the indicator documents and the machine-readable downloads render, so a figure quoted here cannot disagree with the same figure elsewhere on the site. Revisions are corrected in place when the issuing agency revises them, which means a value read today can differ from the same value read last month for no reason other than the agency's own revision schedule.

Data through Aug 1, 2026. Last retrieved from source Sep 23, 2026. Machine-readable JSON

Ticket and admission prices

240.3

Index (1982–84 = 100) · August 2026

Consumer price index for admissions to movies, theaters and concerts

The consumer price index level for the admissions line item covering movies, theaters and concerts combined, seasonally adjusted, on the 1982–84 = 100 base. It is the closest official price measure to a concert ticket and is not concert-specific.

Geography: United States
Reference period: August 2026
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)
Series: CUSR0000SS62031
Method: Stored as published
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

+2.6%

Percent change from a year earlier · August 2026

Twelve-month change in admissions prices

The percentage change in the admissions consumer price index against the same month a year earlier, computed from two stored index levels.

Geography: United States
Reference period: August 2026
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)
Series: CUSR0000SS62031
Method: Year-over-year change
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

+3.4%

Percent change from a year earlier · August 2026

Twelve-month change in consumer prices, all items

The percentage change in the all-items consumer price index for urban consumers against the same month a year earlier. It is the general price level against which admissions inflation is read.

Geography: United States
Reference period: August 2026
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)
Series: CUSR0000SA0
Method: Year-over-year change
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

Employment and pay

147,100

Payroll jobs · July 2026 · preliminary

Payroll employment at performing arts companies

Jobs on the payrolls of performing arts companies, NAICS 7111, seasonally adjusted. The survey counts jobs rather than people and excludes the self-employed and contract workers.

Geography: United States
Reference period: July 2026
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Current Employment Statistics (CES), national
Series: CES7071110001
Method: Stored as published
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

111.4%

Percent of February 2020 payrolls · July 2026 · preliminary

Performing arts payrolls against February 2020

The latest stored payroll level for performing arts companies as a percentage of the stored level for February 2020, the last full month before the sector's shutdown.

Geography: United States
Reference period: July 2026
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Current Employment Statistics (CES), national
Series: CES7071110001
Method: Recovery ratio against February 2020
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

194,390

Jobs · May 2025

Employment at promoters of performing arts, sports and similar events

Estimated employment across all occupations in NAICS 711300, the industry that assembles, promotes and operates live events, for the survey's May reference period.

Geography: United States
Reference period: May 2025
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), national industry-specific
Series: OEUN000000071130000000001
Method: Stored as published
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

$21.64

U.S. dollars per hour · May 2025

Median hourly wage, promoters of performing arts and similar events

The median hourly wage across all occupations in NAICS 711300 for the survey's May reference period. Half of the jobs in the industry pay less than this figure.

Geography: United States
Reference period: May 2025
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), national industry-specific
Series: OEUN000000071130000000008
Method: Stored as published
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

$28.80

U.S. dollars per hour · May 2025

Mean hourly wage, promoters of performing arts and similar events

The mean hourly wage across all occupations in NAICS 711300 for the survey's May reference period. Read against the median, it shows how far higher-paid roles pull the average up.

Geography: United States
Reference period: May 2025
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), national industry-specific
Series: OEUN000000071130000000003
Method: Mean-to-median wage spread
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

$45,020

U.S. dollars per year · May 2025

Median annual wage, promoters of performing arts and similar events

The median annual wage across all occupations in NAICS 711300 for the survey's May reference period. The annual figure assumes year-round employment, which overstates what seasonal and event-driven roles pay.

Geography: United States
Reference period: May 2025
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), national industry-specific
Series: OEUN000000071130000000013
Method: Stored as published
Retrieved: Sep 23, 2026

Indicator Method Dataset Source series

Methods applied

Stored as published

Every observation is stored with the value the issuing agency released for that period, and is replaced only when the agency revises it.

Retrieve the series from the agency's own distribution endpoint or published table, never from a third-party mirror.
Store each observation with its period, level, unit, seasonal-adjustment basis, series identifier and retrieval timestamp.
Correct a stored value in place when the agency revises it; a period the agency has not published is absent rather than estimated.

Year-over-year change

The percentage change between a stored level and the stored level twelve months earlier.

Take the stored level for period t and the stored level for period t−12.
Compute (level_t ÷ level_t−12 − 1) × 100.
Publish no value where either period is missing; no interpolation is performed to bridge a gap.

Recovery ratio against February 2020

The latest stored payroll level expressed as a percentage of the stored level for February 2020.

Take the stored level for the latest published month and the stored level for February 2020.
Compute (latest ÷ February 2020) × 100.
February 2020 is used because it is the last full month before the sector's shutdown; it is a stored observation, not a modelled baseline.

Mean-to-median wage spread

The difference between the published mean and median hourly wage for the same reference period.

Take the published mean hourly wage and the published median hourly wage for the same OEWS reference period.
Subtract the median from the mean.

Cite this dataset

Plain: Live Index, "Live Music Statistics — United States", Live Index, September 23, 2026 (updated September 23, 2026), https://liveindex.io/statistics
APA: Live Index (2026, September 23). Live Music Statistics — United States [Data set]. Live Index. https://liveindex.io/statistics
Chicago: Live Index. "Live Music Statistics — United States." Live Index, September 23, 2026. https://liveindex.io/statistics.
BibTeX: @online{statistics-2026, author = {{Live Index}}, title = {Live Music Statistics — United States}, organization = {Live Index}, date = {2026-09-23}, urldate = {2026-09-23}, url = {https://liveindex.io/statistics} }

Underlying observations are published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and are in the public domain. Live Index compiles, stores and documents them; cite the issuing agency for the observation and Live Index for the compilation.

The full documents behind these figures are the national indicators, and the dataset record is National Live Economy Indicators.