This paper analyzes the singularity of artistic cultural sector workers in the Brazilian metropolitan labor market, considering the job satisfaction of artists that Throsby proposes in his work preference model of artist behavior (1994). We also examine the effect of public expenditures on the income of workers in the cultural sector. Using 2002 to 2010 data from the Monthly Employment Survey (PME) and administrative records from Finance of Brazil (FINBRA), we estimate a probit model and a wage equation. In our model, we estimate wages as a function of: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of workers, (2) a variable for informal jobs, (3) the number of working hours, (4) a variable for the worker having another job, (5) per capita expenditures on culture interacted with a dummy for artistic cultural workers, (6) interactive binary variables involving place of residence and artistic cultural workers and (7) the predicted probability obtained by the probit model. This probability is estimated based on the likelihood of working in a creative activity, considering both workers from the cultural sector and other workers, controlled by: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of workers, (2) characteristics of their jobs, (3) dummies for the metropolitan regions and (4) willingness of creative workers to work additional hours interacted with the number of hours worked. Our results show that workers in the cultural sector are likely to work longer hours when compared to workers in other sectors. For our wage equation, the results suggest that women earn relatively less than men and blacks earn less than whites. Furthermore, earnings increase with age and the level of education. Formal workers obtain higher earnings when compared to informal ones. Finally, an increase in the per capita public expenditure on the cultural sector raises the income of workers in artistic cultural occupations.