Infographic: Animator Employment

Great info graphic! Thank you, JK! It’s important to know these things. Especially in the US people keep being exploited just because they don’t compare their wages.
For freelancers 30 dollars per hour would be far too low (240 dollars a day… 175 euros… seriously?), but since 43 percent seem to have a steady job, the average seems okay.
As a rules of thumb everybody should calculate what they need to live (food, rent, insurance, cost for the car, some pension stuff) and never accept below that number (unless it’s a personal favor or you benefit from the profits and your work force is an investment). If everybody does that, the industry has to pay everybody fairly. And freelancers, don’t forget that you will have times between jobs… you need to charge more to not starve during that time!
You need that money to live, you can prove it and therefor confidently demand it. Never forget that the people who hire you get paid to talk you into a lower wage – it’s their job, it’s what they learned. It’s nothing personal or doubting your skills, it’s business. There is not an infinite amount of animators in the world and none with your exact style and skill set.