Working Under TAG Jurisdiction

From time to time we get asked "What categories of artists, writers and technicians are employed these days?" (Okay, not in those words, exactly, but this is a blog post. We gotta start somewhere.)

Below we answer the question, classification by classification. Please keep in mind that we're only listing the groups with employment numbers above 94, and that these numbers and classifications are what several dozen studios of varying sizes send us via work-status reports.

(Remember, these are working TAG members. There are another 5% to 12% of unemployed active members that are between jobs or waiting to start a gig.)

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT BY CLASSIFICATION

706 Storyboard Artists

313 Tech Director 1s

294 Background Artists

251 Model Designers

233 Staff Animation Writers

(77 Freelance Animation Writers)

221 Directors

175 CGI Animator/Modeler 1s

165 Storyboard Cleanup/Revisionists

151 Layout Artists

138 Animators

106 Visual Development Artists

96 Trainees (various classifications)

95 Tech Director IIIs ...

The classifications shown above represent 16.45% of all the Guild's contract categories. However, the other 83.55% of Guild positions (classifications such as "Final Checker" -- 2 individuals working, or "Color Modelist" -- 3 individuals working) have fewer than 95 people in any one of them, so ... as we say up top ... those numbers have been excluded*.

And understand that the statistics above are data points in time. They could be larger next week, then smaller by December. But employment numbers have been steadily growing over the last 4-5 years, and it looks as though numbers will stay strong over the next 24 to 48 months.

* You might be asking, "So why do 'Freelance Writers' get broken out?" Because it's the one category that has a "freelance" sub-group in the data.