News Reporting

P.A. Works Job Listing Shines a Spotlight on Industry’s Compensation Issues


It’s no secret that folks who go into the anime industry don’t expect to strike it rich. Still, one would hope to pull a living wage from a career that demands so much.

Recently, anime studio P.A. Works (Shirobako, Angel Beats!) published a new job listing. According to the post, the studio is looking for animators for the upcoming Spring 2018 broadcast season.

According to the post, the position is hourly, with a work day that runs from 10:00AM to 7:00PM (with a one-hour lunch break), with weekends and holidays off. The kicker here, though, comes from the wage. The position only pays 770 yen per hour ($6.81 USD). All things held constant, this amounts to an average weekly pay of 43,120 yen ($381.20 USD), and 2,242,240 yen per year ($19,822.44 USD).

In comparison, the United States has a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, and Canadian minimum wages start at $10.85 CAD ($8.45) per hour.

In Japan, animation is considered a “black industry”, which is a term given to careers that pay unfairly low wages for long hours. In some cases, salaries can dip as low as a million yen ($8,804.99 USD) per year.

On a more extreme level, we’ve seen numerous calls for fans to open their wallets to fund affordable animator housing, and studios have begun listing affordable dorms as perks for signing on to their organization.

Source: Ota-suke

About the author

Samantha Ferreira

Samantha Ferreira is Anime Herald’s founder and editor-in-chief. A Rhode Island native, Samantha has been an anime fan since 1992, and an active member of the anime press since 2002, when she began working as a reviewer for Anime Dream. She launched Anime Herald in 2010, and continues to oversee its operations to this day. Outside of journalism, Samantha actively studies the history of the North American anime fandom and industry, with a particular focus on the 2000s anime boom and bust. She’s a huge fan of all things Sakura Wars, and maintains series fansite Combat Revue Review when she has free time available. When not in the Anime Herald Discord, Samantha can typically be found on Bluesky.

Anime Herald

Support Anime Herald

Anime Herald is brought to you through our Patrons and Ko-fi supporters. Consider backing us for as little as $1 a month to help us keep the site ad-free and pay a fair rate to our writers.

Patrons and backers can access several benefits, including Early Article Access, our members-only Discord, and the ability to suggest articles for our team to write on your behalf.



Latest Posts

Columns

The Evolution of Abridged Anime Part 4 – No Screwing The Rules

Fears about legal ramifications were fairly common in the world of comedic anime fandubs, despite some arguing they might be protected under parody laws. Philip Sral of Sherbert Productions shared a story of how three fans caused a large amount of stress while trying to get a copy of one of their works by pretending […]

By Borealis Capps