Theyre pampered, privileged, indulged part of the cultural elite. They spend all their time smoking pot and sipping absinthe. To use a term thats acquired currency lately, theyre entitled. And theyre not after all real Americans.

This what we hear about artists, architects, musicians, writers and others like them. And its part of the reason the struggles of the creative class in the 21st century a period in which an economic crash, social shifts and technological change have put everyone from graphic artists to jazz musicians to book publishers out of work has gone largely untold. Or been shrugged off.

Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen write anthems about the travails of the working man; we line up for the revival of Death of a Salesman. John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson hold festivals and fundraisers when farmers suffer. Taxpayers bail out the auto industry and Wall Street and the banks. Theres a sense that manufacturing, or the agrarian economy, is what this country is really about. But culture was, for a while, what America did best: We produce and export creativity around the world. So why arent we lamenting the plight of its practitioners? Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that creative industries have been some of the hardest hit during the Bush years and the Great Recession. But when someone employed in the world of culture loses a job, he or she feels easier to sneer at than a steel worker or auto worker. (Check out, for example, the unsympathetic comments to a Salon story about job losses among architects, or the backlash to HBOs Girls, for daring to focus on young New Yorkers with artistic dreams and good educations.)

The musicians, actors and other artists we hear about tend to be fabulously successful. But the daily reality for the vast majority of the working artists in this country has little to do with Angelina Jolie or her perfectly toned right leg. Artists in the Workforce, a National Endowment for the Arts report released in 2008, before the Great Recession sliced and diced this class, showed the reality of the creative life. While most of the artists surveyed had college degrees, they earned with a median income, in 2003-05, of $34,800 less than the average professional. Dancers made, on average, a mere $15,000. (More than a quarter of the artists in the 11 fields surveyed live in New York and California, two of the nations most expensive states, where that money runs out fast. The report has not been updated since 2008.)

What does it mean in America to be a successful artist? asks Dana Gioia, the poet who oversaw the study while NEA chairman. Essentially, these are working-class people a lot of them have second jobs. Theyre highly trained dancers, singers, actors and they dont make a lot of money. They make tremendous sacrifices for their work. Theyre people who should have our respect, the same as a farmer. We dont want a society without them.

Many of them, in fact, are effectively entrepreneurs, but have little of the regard of the lavishly paid, mythically potent CEO. A working artist is seen neither as the salt of the earth by the left, nor as a job creator by the right but as a kind of self-indulgent parasite by both sides. Why the disconnect?

Theres always this sense that art is just play, says Peter Plagens, a New York painter and art critic. Art is what children do and what retired people do. Your mom puts your work up on the refrigerator. Or the way Dwight Eisenhower said, Now that Ive fought my battles, I can put my easel up outside.

The reality is different. An ecology of churches, chamber series, libraries, on-call studio work and small and mid-size orchestras that neither pay a salary nor offer medical coverage keep musicians like Adriana Zoppo going: A hardworking freelance violinist who performs across Southern California, shes played, over the last year or so, at a church chamber series, on American Idol, a Glenn Frey standards record and a scene of background music for Mad Men, and with her own Baroque chamber group. Shes also a regular player in the Santa Barbara Symphony, for which she drives 100 miles each way for four rehearsals and two concerts a month. I just do a lot of driving, like every freelancer I know, she says; every week, students come to her apartment for lessons. The economy and the loss of audience and donors mean her work is down by about a third. Theres more and more time between jobs.

Its even tougher, she says, for people who rely on the movie studios. Even before the economy went down, studios started doing more outside California; a lot of it is in Eastern Europe. For those who made their living playing on records and movie soundtracks, All of a sudden, theyre making about 60 percent of what they did. What I see is a lot of people looking for things outside music a lot of people have gotten real estate licenses. I know people whove added massage therapist. Some have dropped medical coverage they cant afford, taking their chances.

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