Yahoo News Hollywood Is “Inherently Financially Unstable” for Writers, Survey Finds
A new community survey from Humanitas is offering a first-of-its-kind look into the state of food insecurity within the TV and film writing industry.
Published by the nonprofit behind the Humanitas Prizes, New Voices, College Screenwriting Awards, and a slate of public programs, the Groceries for Writers Food Insecurity Survey Results are some of the only known data specifically addressing the conditions and impacts of insufficient access to food and the quality of diet among emerging and professional, part-time and full-time, as well as union and nonunion screenwriters working predominantly in the U.S.
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A window into food access (or a lack thereof) among a sampling of the Hollywood writing community, the effort was inspired by the challenging realities writers shared while applying for the nonprofit’s ongoing grocery cards program, launched during the WGA work stoppage last year. “People shared intimate details of their lives, their families’ lives, and the impact on their children,” says Michelle Franke, Humanitas’ executive director, of its Groceries for Writers program. “It started to create a larger narrative of suffering.”
Using the parameters around high, marginal, low and very low food security as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the community survey’s mix of closed- and open-ended questions provides qualitative and quantitative insight into the mental, physical and professional impacts of food insufficiency.
Open for anyone to take and accessible via the Humanitas website, social media and partners of the organization, the voluntary questionnaire launched on Sept. 6 — just five days before the end of the WGA work stoppage — and closed Sept. 22. It would garner 509 responses (100 film and 409 TV writers) across 17 days.
Humanitas survey analysis determined that nearly two-thirds of writers said they sometimes, often or always worried about having enough food for themselves and/or their families, with 60.7 percent reporting they skipped meals due to a lack of resources. Around 77 percent of respondents shared that food insecurity was causing some or a significant impact on their mental health, alongside 64.6 percent who indicated food insecurity similarly impacted their physical health.
With more than 30,000 writers comprising the Writers Guild East and West alone, Daniel Plagens, the Humanitas program manager who served as the survey’s lead writer and analyst, acknowledges that the 500-person survey is “not statistically representative” of the wider screenwriting community. But the results — which have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percent — “still signal food insecurity is an issue among this population of people.”
The survey found that in the last year, around 51 percent of respondents could not afford to eat balanced meals. During that same period, about 42 percent of all writers said they had to choose between buying food and paying for other essentials like rent, utilities and medical bills.
“So much of my recovery was about having food around that felt safe and accessible,” one staff writer, who identified as having an eating disorder, shared via the survey. “This financial stress around food has added a whole other layer to my recovery that I did not anticipate.”
Notably, two-thirds of the survey’s respondents were WGA members, with Franke noting that a union card is “not a golden goose.” According to Humanitas’ executive director, the data indicates WGA, as well as other professional and emerging non-WGA writers, are struggling, as certain issues, “especially at the staffing levels, hadn’t been resolved” for years prior to the 2023 strike. It’s a position underscored by the approximately 42 percent of all TV and film respondents, whether in a guild or not, reporting that their answers around food insecurity were not impacted by the work stoppage.
“Administering the project, we encountered people who held the misconception that everyone working in Hollywood makes an upper-middle-class living or held cynical notions about food insecurity and poverty,” Plagens tells The Hollywood Reporter. “There is also a propensity among some people to look at data like this and mistreat it as a referendum on whether people should pursue creative fields or strike.
“Our data shows writers were facing food insecurity before the strike, that food insecurity isn’t limited to a small number of people, and, frankly, food insecurity shouldn’t be acceptable at any level,” he continues.
The survey generally found that writers working in film and TV who identified as POC or mixed, disabled, and/or neurodivergent reported higher rates of food insecurity. Lower-level TV writers’ job performance, physical and mental well-being were reported as being significantly impacted at higher percentages than their EP and producer-level writing counterparts.
One aspect of the feature writing experience revealed something slightly different, with a larger percentage of scribes who earn their primary income from writing (versus those who don’t) reporting somewhat or significant mental health impacts (77.78 percent to 65.44 percent) over the past year. Feature writers were also worried about having enough food for their families at higher rates (around 75 percent to about 55 percent), and sometimes or often skipped meals (around 44 percent to about 35 percent).
“As a feature writer, I’ve worked for dozens of financiers and studios. Only five or so of those studios have paid me, and one of them still owes me for four full years of work,” one writer told the Humanitas survey. “We aren’t paid for our services — and because we are not paid, we cannot put food on the table.”
According to producer and EP-level TV writing respondents, along with feature writers making a living through writing, today’s food insecurity was also present in their early careers. One reported relying “on the grace of others” to share meals, while others — to avoid spending money on groceries — ate leftover food from the work kitchen that was going to be thrown away. Those kinds of conditions haven’t disappeared for everyone, either, despite moving into upper-level positions. One animation writer, who works “consistently for Disney,” revealed they “live on one meal a day.”
Writers told Humanitas their ability to afford food was impacted by higher costs of living in industry hubs like L.A. and New York, but also inflation in cities between the coasts. To cope both before and during the 2023 writers strike, they’ve turned to inexpensive and unhealthy foods, using food assistance programs, eating smaller portions, receiving help from family, skipping meals, visiting food banks or “lots of credit card debt,” as one anonymized writer noted.
Alongside these quantitative and qualitative outcomes, Humanitas reports that writers feel Hollywood’s pay system is “inherently financially unstable.” It’s a position underscored by the survey’s income data — or lack thereof. When Humanitas asked writers to estimate their annual and monthly incomes before and after the WGA strike, the respondents expressed that it was “difficult for them to know how to answer” the questions, something the nonprofit attributes in part to the “unpredictable and unstable nature of income and employment” in film and TV.
“I know several creatives who are on food assistance programs and more who want to be, but it’s so difficult to qualify and prove need because of how our income looks (enormous at some moments, zero at others),” a staff writer said. “Same for unemployment because of the contract nature of some jobs. The system is not made for those in the gig economy.”
Some scribes expressed that through pandemic-related unemployment policy, they were able to use EBT to supplement their grocery budget, even though one support staffer noted “it can be challenging to get the food you need” with dietary restrictions. But many of those who were able to qualify saw their aid end after those policies expired.
Franke and Plagens both say that in the wake of the new WGA contract, they hope their survey findings can be used as a tool to address food insecurity among screenwriters now or in future union negotiations, as “nonprofits can’t continue to shoulder” what can be addressed by the industry itself, according to Franke.
“Someone asked me [during the strike], ‘Have any of the AMPTP signatories contributed to Groceries for Writers.’ I wrote back to them, ‘No, and that’s not what I’m looking for. What I want is for the AMPTP to go back to the bargaining table, and I want them and the WGA to land a contract where, long term, we don’t have to worry about these issues,’” she says. “Where people are being paid a sustainable living; where we have faced the demons in the closet of what early career people are dealing with; that as a community, we’ve collectively arrived at solutions that move us forward.”
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