How Much Would It Cost For These Networks And Studios To Pay Their Employees A Living Wage?

By Wesley Eversole July 16, 2023

Unless you have spent the last two months living under a rock, you are no doubt aware of the ongoing strikes with the Writers Guild Association (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). Both companies are in a dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over revenue from streaming residuals, among other things.

The AMPTP represent over 350 American film and television companies, but this article focuses on five major studios (ViacomCBS, Sony, Universal, Walt Disney and Warner Brothers) and three major streaming services (Amazon, Apple TV+ and Netflix) and how much it would cost each of these companies to pay their employees a living wage, i.e. the minimum wage necessary for an average employee to live off of without having to rely on either government assistance or a second job. To figure this out, I first had to determine where each company's primary headquarters was located. Next, I had to figure out each company's revenue for the 2022 fiscal year. After that, I had to figure out how much a living wage in each location would cost. Finally, I had to figure out how many employees each company had.

With the exception of Universal Pictures, whose figures came from SignalHire, all of the figures for the companies' employee totals and revenue came from Zippia. I will post a link to each company's page in the Sources section below. The figures for the estimated living wages come from livingwage,mit.edu, with the estimated wages being based on an average of the total wages given for each specific location.

With that being said, here is a look at what it would cost each of the aforementioned companies to pay its employees a living wage.

Amazon

Headquarters: Seattle, Washington

Employees:1,608,000

2022 Revenue: $514,000,000,000

Cost Of Paying Its Employees A Living Wage: $131,912,601,600

Apple

Headquarters: Cupertino, California

Employees: 154,000

2022 Revenue: $394,000,000,000

Cost Of Paying Its Employees A Living Wage: $15,128,713,600

Netflix