Learn about the types of people who become session musicians. This page goes into detail about the employment, gender, and ethnic ratios of the workplace.
Gender Mix By Career Interest, 2024
This graph shows the distribution of females and males that are interested in becoming a session musician. Four or five star ratings on CareerExplorer indicate interest.
More men than women are interested in becoming session musicians at a ratio of 1.43 to 1.
Actual Gender Mix, 2024
32% of session musicians are female and 68% are male.
Gender Bias, 2024
This is one of the most compelling statistics we collect. Gender bias shows the difference between gender interest in being a session musician and the actual gender mix of people in the career.
If there is a significant difference, then it means there is a gender imbalance between those interested in becoming a session musician and those who end up becoming one.
In this case there are more women interested in becoming a session musician than those actually working as one. It is hard to pinpoint the exact reasons why, but there are likely various forces at play, from changing interests over time to societal norms and biases.
Ethnic Mix, 2019
The largest ethnic group of session musicians are White, making up 53% of the population. The next highest segments are Other and Black or African American, making up 16% and 8% respectively.