NEW YORK CITY: On April 9, Actors’ Equity Association published its fifth Hiring Bias and Wage Gap in Theatre Report, documenting employment opportunities and average salaries for actors and stage managers working on Equity contracts across the country in 2022 and 2023. As with previous years, the report found that the industry is making gradual progress towards diversity and equity in union jobs for stage managers and actors. It is available in standard and higher accessibility editions.
Equity, the national union representing more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers working in live theatre, has been tracking this data since 2013. This year’s report is its fifth iteration, and the first to cover two years of data, as the union intends to do, moving forward, to give more time for trends to emerge.
“Change doesn’t happen organically,” Equity president Brooke Shields said in a statement. “The whole reason Equity began sharing this data was to bring awareness of existing disparities to the people who make decisions about what shows to stage, who to hire for them and how much to pay those workers.”
Notable findings include a drastic increase in work weeks compared to the previous, atypical 2021 season as theatres reopened post-Covid shutdown and since continue to approach pre-pandemic levels. They also found higher self-identification reporting rates for LGBTQ+ members and members with disabilities.
For Equity members who are Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC):
- 30.26 percent of all new contracts in 2022 and 2023 went to BIPOC Equity members (an 8.96 percent increase from 2016-19).
- Additionally, with data pulled over the years, Equity saw an increase of more than 10 percent in the number of new contracts offered to BIPOC actors and stage managers in 2019-23.
- Equity also saw substantial increase in pay across the board for all racial and ethnic demographics in all job categories between 2016–19 and 2023. In several categories, BIPOC actors and stage managers appear to be out-earning their white counterparts, though it’s unclear what employment situations created this gap.
- Entry-level jobs, like SPT (Small Professional Theatre) and lower-tiered LORT (League of Resident Theatres) contracts, reported fewer contracts for BIPOC members, in addition to BIPOC members receiving fewer new contracts overall compared to their white/ European American colleagues.
- The percentage of BIPOC chorus members increased from 37 percent in 2022 to 40.1 percent in 2023.
For women, nonbinary, and transgender Equity members:
- Equity found that women and nonbinary artists had fewer contracts on average in 2022 and 2023 compared to 2016-19.
- They also found closer movement to parity among men and women regarding percentage of new contracts (44.4 percent and 43.2 percent in 2023, respectively), but still found an underrepresentation of nonbinary and gender-variant members contracted in 2022 and 2023. For these groups, there was a decrease in 0.4 percent from 2016 to 2019 (2.0 percent) to 2023 (1.6 percent).
- Similarly, they report the pay disparity gap closing between men and women, though women consistently still make less than men, no matter the year. The pay disparity for nonbinary and gender-variant people is apparent, finding that they made around $98.68-$295.54 (depending on job category) less weekly on average than the aggregate average contracts in 2023.
- The number of new contracts offered to transgender workers stayed the same in 2022-2023 (0.8 percent, an increase from 0.1 percent in the 2016-19 period). This is “statistically questionable due to lack of member self-reporting,” according to Equity’s director of equity and inclusion, Danee Conley.
For LGBQ+ Equity members:
- Roughly 14.4 percent of new contracts went to members who self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or queer—“not an exhaustive list and one that is being updated as needed,” the report said—in 2023, compared to the 12.6 percent in 2022.
- There was a 8.5 percent increase in new contracts for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or queer members between the 2016–19 report and 2023.
- Equity reported an increase in their “Prefer to Self-Describe” category and a decrease in lack of reporting via the “Not Provided” category from 2016-19 to 2022, and subsequently to 2023, by 18.7 percent, resulting in a slightly clearer picture of the delegation of new contracts for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or queer members in comparison to their colleagues who identify as straight.
For Equity members with disabilities:
- Equity reported a 0.8 percent increase in the number of members who self-identify from 2016–19 to 2022. (A higher reporting rate could have impacted this number.)
- They found to a 0.3 percent increase in the number of new contracts that went to members with disabilities in 2022-23.
For members over the age of 45 and veterans:
- Actors and stage managers over the age of 45 saw 1.18 percent more contracts in 2022 and 2023, compared to 2016-19.
- Pay between age groups in 2023 is relatively similar when looking at each job category, but does tend to decrease as members get older, with Equity noting that they want to keep eyes on the wide pay gaps between 45-64 and 64-plus that occurred in the two years.
- 0.5 percent of the 18,085 new contracts in 2023 went to members who identified as veterans (an increase of 0.1 percent from 2022, the same percentage of change from 2016-19).
- Veteran self-identification has improved by 20.8 percent since 2016-19, though there was an increase in members who “Prefer Not to Say.”
To reach its findings, the report analyzes the distribution of new contracts and the average weekly salaries among race/ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, and veteran status. It also examines the intersection of these identities to see how age/race, age/gender, and race/gender shift these distributions. While Equity cannot legally tell employers who to hire, Equity leadership hopes that this report will help move the needle and bring to light current progress and challenges in the industry.
“It’s now more important than ever that we take care to ensure our own workplaces can live up to the actual ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Equity executive director Al Vincent Jr. said in a statement. “I hope this report can support all of us in the theatre industry in doing just that.”
The report was authored by Danee Conley, Equity’s director of diversity and inclusion. The data was compiled by Russell Lehrer. The report’s introductions are by Equity president Brooke Shields and Equity executive director Al Vincent, Jr. Elizabeth Mason and David Levy made additional contributions. Its design and layout was by Noah Diamond.
