Friday, August 29, 2014

TAG Wage Survey -- Complete

Now with trade paper Add On.

Every year, we drill down into wages paid in the animation industry by polling Animation Guild membership. We ask 1) what folks have been paid, 2) they answer, and 3) we compile results publically so that interested parties can get a feel for what the "going rate" in various job categories might be.

(No wage suppression going on here, boss! Just wage knowledge!)

This year, we got a survey form return rate of 33%, considerably higher than last year's total (26%) or the percentage from the year before that (24%). The highest response rates were

Story Art -- 36%

Layout Background -- 34%

Design/Color -- 35%


Some of the highlights: ...

Selected Wage Categories

Staff Story Editors (weekly): Low - $1640; High - $4,000; median - $2,531

Staff feature writers (weekly): low -- $1499.60; high - $7,558.82; median - $2,800

Staff TV writers (weekly): low - $1100; high - $3000; median - $2000

Feature Directors (home video, theatrical; weekly): low - $1973.19; high - $9,615.39; median - $3,800

TV directors (weekly): low - $1,406.25; high - $4,600; median - $2,475

Timing Directors (weekly): low - $1,375; high - $3,100; median - $1,824.43

Retake Directors (weekly): low - $1,707.38; high - $3,100; median - $2,593.75

Feature Storyboard artists (weekly): low - $1,400; high - $3,789; median - $2100

TV Production Board artists (weekly): low - $1,238.16; high - $3,307.50; median - $2000

Character layout (weekly): low - $1,312.50; high - $2,526.32; median - $1,886.40

Background layout (weekly): low - $1,175; high- $4,200; median - $1,909.40

Art Directors (weekly): low - $1,187.50; high - $2,909.09; median - $2,363.64

Production Designers (weekly): low - $2,125; high - $5,250; median - $2,330.47

3D Animators (weekly): low - $1,200; high - $3,100; median - $1968

Effects animators (weekly): low - $1,346.15; high - $2,850; median - $2,018.10

You can find the complete Animation Guild wage survey here.

Please note: The survey encompassed members working both union and non-union animation jobs in Los Angeles. Also note: It includes new media production, where rates are sometimes lower than traditional media.

The weekly wages shown above and at the link are based on 40 hours. Smaller samples have larger variances year to year, and larger samples have smaller differences.

Add On: Deadline does its own analysis of TAG's latest wage survey.

he Animation Guild’s 2014 wage survey is in, and it shows salaries for animators holding fairly steady this year compared with last year. But the reported median weekly pay for some jobs — most notably staff animation_guild_logoTV writers, feature storyboard artists, and staff story editors — is down from salaries reported five years ago. The median weekly pay reported by feature animation directors is up compared with 2013 and 24% higher than in 2010. Meanwhile, overall employment at the guild, IATSE Local 839, is at an all-time high. About a third of the guild’s 3,200 members took part in this year’s survey, up from 26% last year. ...

3 comments:

Celshader said...

Thank you for posting the link to the wage survey on this page. The link to the 2014 Wage Survey on the Animation Guild page is broken.

Steve Hulett said...

Sorry about that. It's a long weekend, but we'll work to correct in the next couple of days.

Steven Kaplan said...

Apologies for the long delay, but the links on the page you provided have been fixed.

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