Employment ups and downs

Click on thumbnails for a full-size image

The numbers are in, and they show that the recent Disney layoffs have had only a temporary effect on overall employment under the Guild's jurisdiction.

The dip caused by the Disney feature layoffs in March has been offset by new hiring at other studios, particularly DreamWorks and Sony Pictures Animation.

With a combined total of 24.9% of all the Guild jobs, the members working under the two Disney contracts (the TAG CBA and the IATSE CBA) remain the Guild's largest employer bloc, but DreamWorks and Starz Media (formerly known as IDT or Film Roman) are closing in. Guild employment is the most employer-diverse it has been in decades, which means that an event such as the recent Disney cutbacks has less of an impact on the big picture.

Keep in mind that hiring and employment patterns change over time.

In 1956, for instance, Walt Disney Productions was the largest employer in animation. Four years later, Hanna-Barbera was the big gorilla on the block. And H-B hadn't even existed in 1956. Bill and Joe were still directing at M-G-M.

Let's take another year, 1985. Twenty-two years ago the largest animation employer was Filmation, a studio that started in 1962, four-and-a-half years after H-B.

By the Spring of 1989, Filmation was gone.

There has been only one studio that was in existence in 1952 -- the year of TAG's birth -- that's around now. That studio, of course, is Disney.

But even Disney has gone through a half-dozen transformations in five-plus decades. Like, no animators have worked in the studio's animation building in twenty-one years.