Naiomy Guerrero, 26, goes to at least a dozen art events a month; more during the art world’s busy fall season. She’s worked for several high-profile arts nonprofits, artist studios, and galleries, and began her master’s degree in art history.

But around two years ago, she left her job in the art world. Guerrero hasn’t lost her passion for the arts, and still blogs about art at GalleryGirl.nyc. But as the daughter of two immigrant parents, she chose financial stability. She now works as a financial aid counselor, earning over 50% more than she did at her most recent arts-related job.

“I grew up poor, and I never want to be poor again,” she says, even if “that means not working in the art world because there isn’t a stable enough position.”

New York Times showed 22-, 23-, and 24-year-olds aspiring to work art and design are Unlike some of her peers, Guerrero wasn’t able to fall back on a crucial resource: help from Mom and Dad. A recent report in theshowed 22-, 23-, and 24-year-olds aspiring to work art and design are the most likely to receive financial assistance from their parents, with 53% reporting some help, compared with 40% of twenty-somethings overall. They also received the most money, an average of $3,600 a year, compared with an average of $3,000 for their peers in other fields.

While it’s hardly headline news that creative fields aren’t the most lucrative, the finding highlights the largely invisible role of class in the art world, at a time when efforts around gender and racial inclusion have become increasingly commonplace. It also points to some of the challenges in bringing economic diversity to a liberal-leaning industry that values humanism and resourcefulness, but also relies on the ability to engage and feel comfortable with deep-pocketed collectors.

It also highlights how, in some ways, the art world plays by its own economic rules. Many industries across the economy are making active efforts to diversify their workforces, driven by research showing that diversity is correlated with better economic performance. But key segments of the art market are built upon the spending habits, philanthropy, and social networks of the ultra-wealthy, a feature of the commercial art world that appears to immunize it against this workforce trend. Thanks to its structural dependence on a small group of high-net-worth collectors and donors, hiring in some quarters of art world tends to favor those with the right connections and similar frames of reference.

Of course, it’s not every part of the art world. A number of institutions across New York are taking steps to help bring down the barriers to a career in the arts, by providing paid internships or building affordable housing for artists. But the barriers arise early on. Guerrero, for example, was born and partially raised in New York (she also spent time in the Dominican Republic), but didn’t visit an art gallery until after her first year of college.

“I had no idea the cultural and artistic mecca that New York City was, because for me, in the Bronx, that didn’t exist,” she says.

Then there’s the cost of education. Undergraduate tuition at a private arts school is expensive, and scholarships are less common than at wealthier universities with large endowments. New York’s Pratt Institute charged $46,140 for the 2016–2017 school year. The historically free Cooper Union, against the protests of many students and faculty members, began charging tuition in 2014.

Out of school, few artists sell enough work to survive in the early stages of their career, and many entry-level jobs in New York City’s large and flourishing culture industry pay very little, or even nothing at all. A 2011 study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that studio arts majors were among the top 10 majors with the lowest median earnings, highest unemployment rates, highest incidence of part-time work, and lowest average earnings boost from a graduate degree. President Barack Obama was so skeptical of the value of an art history degree he counseled students to study manufacturing instead, despite the rapid disappearance of manufacturing jobs since the 1970s.