Equity work patterns over time - 2015 update

Every year, staff prepares a report on work weeks from the previous year, and a condensed version appears in the EQ from time to time. There are certainly lots of numbers to sift through, but statistics are nothing without context – a comparison of those numbers over time. Are they climbing, declining, or staying steady?

In an effort to provide some of that context, I started charting the workweek numbers a few years ago, and here is what the picture looks like as of mid 2015:

Work weeks over time

Note: the reporting period changed from calendar to fiscal in 2011, and Jan-Mar 2011 is not reflected in this chart.

Over the past thirteen reporting periods, the typical year has generally hovered around and above 70,000 work weeks for our members - that's the bold red line at the top. Contracts under the CTA and ITA make up about two-thirds of that.

It's a bit hard to make out at this scale, but the cluster of lines immediately below the 10K mark are opera, dance and guest artist, all roughly at the same 6-7,000 level. Opera and guest artist have stayed pretty steady, but due in large part to the welcoming of the artists at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens into our membership, the dance number has risen over the past two years. 

Below that group, the orange line represents small scale and indie projects of all types, which have also seen a significant increase in the past several years. 

Finally, the line right at the bottom is actually two lines: amateur and other (a grab bag of miscellaneous engagements), both of which only account for a few hundred work weeks annually.

Although this year is down slightly from last year's record high, the trend is still very positive, and it will be interesting to see what next year holds in store.

The hyphenated member

There has been a lot of discussion lately, in connection with the independent theatre review, on the subject of the "hyphenated" nature of our membership. By this, people mean that members frequently pursue a career as an actor-playwright, director-coach, SM-TD and similar. The basic point being made is that almost all of us have hyphenated careers – some have even gone so far as to say that they don't know any members who don't have hyphenated careers.

Since most of these pronouncements are based on anecdotal data, I thought it might be worth measuring them against some more comprehensive stats. As it turns out, they're not far off the mark.

In the 2007 survey, we asked members to tell us a bit about the composition of their careers and, in fact, almost all of them are hyphenated. 81% of members indicated that they had worked in Equity's jurisdiction in the three year period preceding the survey, but only a small percentage indicated that was their only source of work.

Among the hyphenated, the highest percentage (62%) also worked in a similar capacity in other performance areas, such as film, television or music. 57% indicated that they had various other jobs related to live performance, but outside our jurisdiction, with coaching, writing and teaching at a post-secondary level topping the list. Approximately 44% of members mentioned work outside the realm of live performance – employment in the service industries, other professional pursuits and office work accounted for just over half of that.

I'm sure it won't have escaped notice that this adds up to way more than 100% of the membership. So not only is most of the membership hyphenated, but many appear to have more than one hyphen in their career. Nothing surprising there.

In the next section of the survey, we asked how all those pursuits fit together in a single year. The response to a that question brings a bit more clarity to the picture.

Taken as a group, just under half of the membership's typical year is spent doing work under Equity contracts, or in similar performance activities. The remainder of the work year is devoted largely to activities outside of our jurisdiction, split evenly between those related to live performance and those not.

What a life! There are times when I think stats like these should be plastered on the cover of every theatre school and university drama department brochure. I wonder how many people would pursue live performance as a career if they knew, in advance, what to expect...