Jobs & Budgets Survey: Just How Busy Are You?

Last week, I surveyed my readers asking “Just how busy are you?” 118 people responded. Here are the results.

DISCLAIMERS: This survey was mailed to 50,000 readers, 118 responded. (Which gives you an idea of how much we like surveys, I guess.) This is NOT a random survey, rather it is a survey of my audience, which tends to be older, more male than female and works professionally with media.

Think of this as a snapshot of professional media people who use Adobe and Apple software. This survey was open from May 10 – May 15, 2021.

Question 1: How would you describe your current work status?

• 62% are working full-time in some capacity
• 19% are unable to work because the jobs aren’t there.

People are busier than I expected, which is good news. But 1 in 5 folks are struggling to find work.

Comments:

• Working from home FCP X editing
• Under a corporation, not a production company
• Retired. But doing lot of VHS, Mini Tapes transfer
• I’m a Landlord so I work when something breaks or needs remodeling. Right now  I’m remodeling and can’t think about editing, but really want to.
• Retired and doing volunteer media work,
• Not working as much as I’d like – because the number of jobs is way, way down
• I do freelance work on the side. I’m a media instructor full time. My side work has fallen off quite a bit.

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QUESTION 2: Give me a sense of how many jobs are out there?

• 45% have as much, or more, work as they can handle
• 55% reports a lack of work

The different between the answers to this question vs. Question 1 is that a number of respondents work for companies where media is not their sole focus.

Comments:

• I am retired in small town Canada & added FCP as a hobby to pass time during the lock down.
• Not sure sure since I don’t punch a time clock
• I am retired and just film for friends and fun
• Depends on the job
• Had been slow but clients now starting to come out of hibernation.
• Only do work or by consulting for previous clients or friends.
• I produce my own work.
• The only paid work I do is for the university, therefore, nothing for me at the moment, and perhaps with other streaming events this live audience venue may not return
• There is a very strong influx of work requests now and everyone wants it yesterday. Better than a work drought!

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QUESTION 3: How are budgets now compared to before the pandemic for the work that you do?

• 60% report budgets equal to, or greater than, those before the pandemic
• 28% report lower to drastically lower budgets.

This, to me, was better news than I expected. My initial assumption was that budgets were down across the board.

Comments:

• Most of my friends in media work are find it hard to get work or budget
• Budgets are lower – and I also don’t some of my time to certain projects
• Not sure
• I took a 20K paycut at the nonprofit, plus editing 6-8 music pieces a week for my church YouTube service
• There was a disturbing trend of reducing pay for Covid jobs when should’ve been increasing pay due to hazardous conditions.
• I work at a college doing media so my budget is set but I have equipment to do a lot of videos.

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QUESTION 4: What country are you located in?

While the majority of respondents are in the US, it always pleases me to get responses from elsewhere in the world.

I did not create this survey – nor did I get enough responses from outside the US – to analyze trends by country.

SUMMARY

Business for media professionals seems to be coming out of the pandemic – but stresses such as lower budgets and insufficient work are significant obstacles for many.

Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below.

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