The only job growth is in creating things or taking care of people.

Artists take care of people by creating things. 

Which makes me wonder why they're so underpaid by society, relatively speaking. 

This analysis classifies occupations according to how routine their tasks are and whether they use mostly cognitive skills or mostly manual skills. 

The evolution of U.S. employment can be categorized across four types of occupations:

• Nonroutine cognitive occupations, which include management and professional occupations
• Nonroutine manual occupations, which include service occupations related to assisting or caring for others
• Routine cognitive, which include sales and office occupations
• Routine manual, which include construction, transportation, production and repair occupations2

The picture is clear: Employment in nonroutine occupations—both cognitive and manual—has been increasing steadily for several decades. Employment in routine occupations, however, has been mostly stagnant. 

Another pattern emerging from the graph is the more pronounced volatility of routine occupation employment over the business cycle. This is the result, in large part, of the cyclicality of industries in which these occupations are largely employed.3