Two-thirds of people working in Canada’s factual TV industry earn more than $50,000 per year, according to a survey conducted earlier this year by the Canadian Media Guild. This is income before expenses and taxes as reported by the 328 workers who completed the online survey between May and July.

As noted in our first report on the survey, the workers work long hours with a quarter saying they worked more than 60 hours per week in their most recent job and 60% saying they worked at least 45 hours per week. Nearly 30% report they don’t get reimbursed for their expenses while 61% say they don’t get paid for all of the time they put in. Two-thirds say they don’t get paid if they are sick.

The largest group of workers, 46%, said they were paid on a weekly basis in their last factual TV job, while 34% were paid on a daily basis and 6% by piece. Only 8% said they were on salary.

There was enough data to provide approximate weekly pay ranges and averages for seven job categories in factual TV (click chart to enlarge):

 

The survey also provides approximate daily rates for the following five job categories (click chart to enlarge):

The workers who identified as women and people of colour reported lower annual incomes than those who didn’t. A higher proportion of women (62%) said they earned all of their income from factual TV, compared with 55% of all respondents. More than three-quarters of all respondents reported that they earn at least 80% of their income from work in factual TV.

Click here to view a summary of the results.

For more information, contact organizer Karen Wirsig (karen@cmg.ca) at 416-591-5333, ext. 222, or 1-800-465-4149. Find us on Facebook.