ant
Explanation
This comic depicts an ant working at a music studio, being told by a larger insect (a mantis or grasshopper, likely the boss) that there are no openings for the ant's son, and that the ant is "lucky you're still here."
The caption below reads: "The arts struggled to adjust to a post-industrial economy."
This is a riff on Aesop's fable of "The Ant and the Grasshopper." In the original fable, the industrious ant works hard all summer storing food, while the grasshopper plays music and enjoys itself. When winter comes, the ant is prepared and the grasshopper starves. The moral is about the virtue of hard work and planning over frivolity.
The comic inverts this by placing the ant in a creative/artistic profession -- specifically, music -- which is traditionally the grasshopper's domain. In a "post-industrial economy," the old dichotomy between practical labor (the ant's domain) and the arts (the grasshopper's domain) has collapsed. The ant, carrying a guitar, has apparently abandoned its traditional industriousness in favor of artistic pursuits, but is struggling in a shrinking industry where even loyalty doesn't guarantee employment.
The humor comes from the reversal of expectations: in the modern gig economy and the declining music industry, even the famously hardworking ant can't make it as a musician. The "post-industrial economy" reference suggests that as manufacturing and traditional labor have declined, everyone -- even the most industrious workers -- has been forced into creative or service-sector work, where the old virtues of diligence and thrift no longer guarantee success. The ant has become the grasshopper, and it's not going well.