Creative industries continued to power the growth of the UK’s workforce last year, adding new posts at twice the rate of the rest of the economy, according to official data.

With an estimated 2,040,000 jobs – 75 per cent of them outside London – the UK’s creative industries continue to develop new jobs faster than other sectors at a time of record levels of employment for the UK economy as a whole.

In 2018 the creative industries grew jobs by 1.6 per cent, compared to the UK-wide employment increase of 0.8 per cent. Between 2011 and 2018, creative industries employment has mushroomed by 30.6 per cent, compared to the UK average growth of 10.1 per cent during that period.

The creative industries account for half a million more jobs than the digital sectors, although there is some overlap between the two in the official data and the intersection of creative skills and technology, known as Createch, is one of the most exciting parts of the economy.

In the wider creative economy, which counts creative occupations in other sectors to roles specifically in the creative industries, the total number of UK jobs is 3.2m or 9.6 per cent of all UK jobs (by comparison, the wider digital economy accounts for 2.2m jobs or 6.8 per cent of all roles).

During 2018 job growth rates varied across the different sub-sectors that make up the creative industries. Last year, architecture added most jobs (+7.5 per cent), followed by music, the performing and the visual arts (+4.9 per cent) and publishing (+4.9 per cent).

Over the longer 2011-2018 period, the biggest job growth was in design and designer fashion (+60 per cent), the creative end of the IT, software and computer services category (+51.7 per cent) and music, performing and visual arts (+39 per cent).