EXCLUSIVE: 63% of entertainment professionals earn less than £5,000 per year

Our Pay & Opportunities study also reveals that only 13% of professionals take home more than £20,000 per year.

Entertainment professionals are faced with long periods of unemployment, with one in five (19%) unable to secure paid work within the past six months.

In the talent category, 68% of actors, dancers and musicians clawed in less than a paltry £5,000 over the past 12 months, forcing 66% to take on at least one additional job to survive. 

Shockingly, just under a third of talent have never had an entertainment job that lasted more than a week. 

"Getting exposure" is a term often used in the industry and the lack of pay and opportunities means a staggering 53% of all talent agree to do unpaid work to gain experience and get themselves noticed.

Mandy.com also analysed film and TV crew members and found that, while pay amongst crew is higher than talent, 54% of crew members still earn less than £10,000 per year, 13% take unpaid work every month and 12% have been unable to find paid work in the past six months.

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54% of crew members earn less than £10,000 per year

The report also demonstrates evidence of a gender imbalance within both pay and opportunities in the sector. 82% of women earn less than £10,000 per year compared to 69% percent of men, while 63% of women compared to 57% of men have a second job outside of entertainment to help support themselves.

“Four years ago we revealed that 77% of actors earned less than £5,000 per year - despite a slight improvement this year, the survey shows that impossibly low incomes are still the norm amongst the acting community, in fact this is the case across the entire entertainment sector, whether you’re cast or crew, musician or dancer,” said Phillip Large, CEO of The Mandy Network. 

“Entertainment careers are always going to be laced with uncertainty and periods of downtime. But as this industry continues to draw criticism for its lack of diversity, too many of the meaningful job opportunities are still being handed out behind closed doors.”

The report’s findings also indicate a high level of anxiety, stress and depression amongst all entertainment professionals. Overall, 63% of women and 48% of men surveyed struggle with anxiety, 59% of women and 61% of men suffer from stress, and 37% of women and 36% of men admit to battling depression.

Finally, the study highlights the positive impact of technology on the fortunes of entertainment professionals, with 69% of respondents claiming that online platforms have been helpful when looking for/securing entertainment industry work. 

“With a scarcity of good opportunities in our sector, it’s vital that candidates take the initiative and do everything they can to bolster their chances of success, whether that’s marketing and promoting themselves via social media, using communications tools to audition for roles that would be difficult to travel to or collaborating with others to create films, theatre and content themselves,” Large added.

Our aim is to empower our members to take control of their own career and we saw a great example of this when Christ Overton crewed his short film The Silent Child using Mandy.com, on an unsalaried basis, and won an Oscar earlier this year.

Mandy.com's study was conducted with over 3,000 active members of the entertainment community - click here to see the full entertainment industry report.

Philip concluded by saying "The report is only the first step, we have identified a number of issues and started to raise awareness, but we don't want to stop there. For this survey to be of any use we need to use it to drive real change in the industry. However, we can't do it alone and so we will be seeking the support of a number of the leading associations, union and educators. Hopefully, together we can develop a clear set of actions that will support creative professionals across the UK."