Labor Movement

Correct, the vast, vast majority of SAG actors earn so little money that even if it's their "full" time job, it's usually a secondary or tertiary one in terms of percentage of household income. There's an article floating around right now which says that something like 80% or 90% of SAG actors earn so little money per year that they don't even qualify for the SAG healthcare.

The reason that they earn so little is that pay for non A-list actors is really small, but perhaps the bigger issue is that non A-list actors don't get cast very often, it's a really difficult business to get noticed and cast. A "successful" SAG actor would be one who gets cast in a 3-5 episode guest star role each year, and maybe 5 day player roles too. Most don't even get that. And with residuals being so small, the money for all that work is pretty small, especially for a HCOL city like LA, where you have to be based as a struggling actor, because casting directors want to see you in person.

It's a bit different for writers in WGA, there you have to get a certain amount of writing credits to even get into the guild, and getting them initially is really hard, you have to intern or PA for established writing rooms, and then a certain percentage of episodes must be written by non guild members each season, so those will be given to the interns/PAs. But since streaming does 8-10 episodes rather than 22 like it was in the 90s, and there are no more traditional writing rooms for streaming, there's no more pipeline for young writers to get in, and established writers are expected to write all 8 episodes but get paid for only 1 (the pilot). Even if you get into the guild, you'll be lucky to be tapped to write 2-3 episodes for an established show each year, and the pay is tiny.