If it feels like there are far less writers working in film and television nowadays, that’s because there are. The WGA West‘s latest data shows that 27% fewer members reported any earnings in 2025 compared to peak employment three years prior.
Around 5,072 writers reported earnings to the guild last year, down from nearly 7,000 in 2022, according to the WGAW annual financial report, released to members last month.
“It is clear that the contraction continues to have an impact on the industry,” the guild’s western division says in the audit, calling the situation “a result of the companies’ pullback in scripted programming after years of overspending.”
However, while the number of jobs available to writers appears to still be in free fall after the 2023 strikes, the total up-front earnings of the writers who are working look like they might be leveling out. From 2024 to 2025 alone, employment decreased 10.2%, but writers generated a total of $1.7 billion in 2025, which was a marginal 1.3% decline from the year prior. That’s after a 20% gain from 2023 to 2024.
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There are several factors at play that could explain this. Even before the streaming bubble burst, episodic orders were shrinking, leading to less opportunities in writers’ rooms. The jobs available tend to continue to go to more experienced, well-connected writers who can command higher fees, which would skew the earnings higher even as employment fell. However, another year of extreme decline in jobs and largely no change in earnings in 2025 could indicate that even the seasoned writers are beginning to feel the crunch.
Total earnings are still down about 25% from that 2022 peak — a noticeable squeeze even if the money is being distributed among significantly fewer individuals.
As expected, television employment continues to suffer more greatly than feature film writing, where jobs are only down about 14% since 2022 to 2,007 members recording earnings last year. In TV, jobs are down more than 33%. And, while TV writers’ total earnings largely follow the greater trend in employment vs. earnings, feature film writing has actually generated more money for writers than any time in the last five years.
Feature film writers reported about $521 million in earnings for 2025, up 7.2% from the year before.
Residuals were also down 4.9% year-over-year to $535.5 million for 2025. Streaming continues to bring in the largest portion of residuals, totaling just over $330 million between television and film. For the first time ever, that’s a nominal decline from the year prior’s $346 million. While other categories of residuals (including broadcast, cable, foreign TV, home video, pay TV, and more) have been on the decline for many years, streaming had been on the rise over the last decade or so.
Overall, residuals are actually up 14.3% over a five-year period still, even though they’ve been on a steady, if marginal, decline since 2022.
Television still represents the largest portion of residual income for writers, and while most subcategories followed the downward trend, high-budget SVOD residuals are growing. Those typically apply to programs 96+ mins in length with a budget of $30 million or more. Over a five-year period, HBSVOD residuals have increased more than 300% to hit $77.83 million in 2025.
This tracks, given that production budgets have ballooned in recent years meaning that many more programs fall within this category. The upward trend also seems to indicate that above-the-line guilds’ push for improved streaming residual formulas has worked.
Per the WGAW, these preliminary numbers are likely to change in future reports as more extensive data becomes available, including the employment data. The numbers in this report reflect the guild’s most up-to-date information as of March 2026. The guild says 2025’s numbers are anticipated to increase “to a level closer to, albeit still below, that of 2024.”