There is no non-union rate, and here is where the numbers actually come from
This sounds like a dodge, but it is the finding. We traced every non-union figure we could reach back to its origin, and there are exactly five kinds of source, none of which is a dataset.
Start with what a union rate is, because the contrast is the whole subject. It is a number in a ratified collective bargaining agreement, published as a dated sheet and enforceable by claim and arbitration, and you can pull the document up yourself.
Non-union has none of that machinery: no bargaining unit, no signatory register, no rate sheet, no filing requirement, and no body collecting claims. Nobody registers a non-union production with anybody.
Every non-union figure we could trace, by kind of sourceGraded on 8 September 2026
Job board salary scrapersThe most cited, the worst
Worthless
One gives a national average of $46,240 a year from job postings. Its top paying regions are Canadian provinces, which tells you the underlying corpus is not American actor listings at all.
Unpublished surveysBy parties selling something
Low
An acting school cites a survey of a hundred working actors and a university study. Neither the survey instrument, the sample, nor the study citation is provided. It sells career intensives.
Rate pages citing nothingRanking well
Unverifiable
One says its figures are compiled from published rate cards and trade reporting. It names no rate card and no trade report. The ranges are plausible, which is not the same as evidenced.
Practitioner recollectionProducers and casting
Directional
Honest estimates from people who book this work, with no external citation. Good for direction, useless for magnitude, and the best of them is one sentence outside its own stated scope.
Citation launderingThe same number, recirculated
Circular
Seven sites publish $100 to $200 a day for non-union background. Two attribute it to a publication whose current article says something different. See the box below.
The one real exceptionVoiceover only
Published
The GVAA guide is an actual published non-union reference, explicitly non-union facing. Its methodology, maintainers and update schedule are not disclosed anywhere, and the live tables sit behind a login.
The most repeated non-union figure on the internet, and what happened to it.
Seven sites publish $100 to $200 a day for non-union background work. Two of them attribute it to Backstage, so we went and looked.
Backstage’s current article gives something else entirely. Non-union background is $17.28 an hour in Los Angeles and $16.50 in New York, adding that rates are mostly dictated by the minimum wage of the locale.
That is a far better model, and it is the part that got dropped in transmission. Eight hours at those rates is $138.24 and $132.00, which sits neatly inside the laundered band, and is presumably why nobody noticed.
The people best placed to publish a non-union rate all decline to. A casting director writing for producers says plainly that there are no standard rates for non-union work.
So does the union. Running an organising campaign against non-union commercials, it describes those rates as ranging from exposure and a sandwich upward. Even the organisation with the most to gain from a hard comparison has no number either.
The real non-union floor is the minimum wage, and that explains everything
Once you accept there is no scale, the question becomes what actually stops a non-union rate falling. The answer is ordinary employment law and nothing else.
This is the fact that makes regional variation make sense. Non-union pay in Georgia is not low because Georgia is cheap. It is low because Georgia has no state minimum above the federal one and no coverage requirement.
The legal floor under a non-union dayMinimum wage rates for 2026
Georgia, Louisiana, TexasFederal floor applies
$58.00
$7.25 an hour, eight hours. Atlanta is a market where almost all background work is non-union, which makes this the operative number for a great deal of real work.
New MexicoState minimum
$96.00
$12.00 an hour. A significant production state with a floor well under the coastal markets.
IllinoisState minimum
$120.00
$15.00 an hour.
CaliforniaState minimum
$135.20
$16.90 an hour, and local city minimums can sit above it.
New York City and downstateRegional minimum
$136.00
$17.00 an hour, against $16.00 for the rest of the state.
Union background, theatricalFor comparison
$231.00
Eight hours, from 1 July 2026, plus 21.5 per cent to the plans. Roughly four times the Georgia legal floor before a single bump or penalty.
One further point about the floor is worth stating. A non-union offer is a wage, and a wage is subject to ordinary wage law.
That is genuinely useful, but it also means the protections you have are the ones every worker has, and none of the ones this industry built for itself.
What we could not find, and the absence is the point.
We looked for any non-union pay dataset with a stated sample size, collection period and method. There is not one on the open web.
We also found no market by market non-union figures for Chicago, New Orleans or Albuquerque, no non-union industrial or corporate rates from any source, and no count of non-union productions, performers or spend anywhere.
The casting sites do not publish aggregate compensation data, and their notice archives are not readable in bulk. So the largest half of this industry is, in the literal sense, unmeasured.
The comparison nobody does, which is total against total
Every page in this search compares a day rate to a day rate. That is the wrong comparison, and getting it wrong is what makes non-union offers look competitive.
A union day carries things that never appear on the payslip. Employer contributions to the plans, residuals, penalties, allowances and an enforcement process. A non-union day carries the day and nothing else.
Here is one shoot day on a national commercial, priced both ways. Not one of the forty-six pages we read attempts this calculation.
One shoot day, national commercial, a year of national cableUnion figures from the 2025 contract rate sheets
Session or day rateWhat both sides call the fee
$855.20
Against a documented non-union range of $1,000 to $2,500 flat. On this line alone, non-union looks better, and this is the line everybody compares.
Use fees, 52 weeks national cableThe line nobody adds
$10,000
Non-union: nothing, because it is inside the buyout. This single row is four times the top of the entire non-union range.
Employer plan contributions23.5 per cent on commercials
$2,551
Paid on top, straight to the plans. You never see it and it is the only route to health coverage. Non-union: nothing.
OvertimeHours nine and ten, then beyond
$160.35
An hour at time and a half, then $213.80 at double time, and double time all day on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Non-union has none unless federal wage law happens to apply.
Meal penaltiesPer half hour
$27.00
First and second half hours, then $53.00 each thereafter. Non-union: nothing, and a non-union payment typically covers ten hours rather than eight.
Per diem and mileageOn location
$101.00
A day, plus mileage at the federal rate, plus meal allowances of $19, $31 and $50. Non-union: negotiated, or nothing.
Late paymentIf they do not pay
$13.09
Per day after 25 business days, owed regardless of notice and accruing indefinitely. Non-union: small claims court.
The total value of the dayBefore any penalty
$13,406
Against $1,000 to $2,500 for the non-union equivalent. Roughly five to thirteen times, and about $2,551 of it never touches the actor’s bank account.
The same arithmetic on a plain theatrical day is less dramatic and still decisive. A day performer at $1,283 plus 22 per cent to the plans is $1,565 of employer cost before overtime, before a meal penalty, before residuals.
The documented non-union indie lead rate is $100 to $350 a day. That is a spread of four and a half to fifteen times, with no residual tail on the non-union side at all.
One catch that cuts against the union, and actors are rarely told it.
Not everything you are paid counts toward health eligibility. Travel allowances, per diem, meal penalties and rest period violations are expressly not covered earnings.
They are cash in hand and they are worth having. They do not move you toward the earnings threshold, which only performance wages, session fees and residuals do.
There are also per project contribution ceilings, of $232,000 on a theatrical picture and rather less on television. So the plans do not scale indefinitely with a big booking.
Where non-union genuinely pays more, honestly
A page that only argues one way is not worth reading. There are four real cases, and we found them by looking at where union scale is negotiable or set deliberately low.
Two of them are startling, because they are union agreements with no minimum in them. Under the Micro-Budget Project Agreement, most terms are subject to negotiation between producer and performer.
There is no scale rate at all. So any non-union offer above nothing beats union scale there, because there is no union scale to beat.
The four cases, and how far they goChecked 8 September 2026
Micro-Budget Project AgreementUp to $20,000 a picture
No minimum
The union states most terms are subject to negotiation. There is no published scale rate, so the only floor is state and federal wage law, exactly as in non-union work.
New Media below the high budget thresholdsSame principle
Negotiable
The union says initial compensation can be negotiable. Plan contributions are still owed at 17 per cent and payment is due in five business days, so the union offer is a negotiated wage plus fringe rather than a floor.
Vertical and micro dramaThe union’s own new agreement
$250
A lead on eight hours, or $468.75 on twelve, under an agreement announced on 13 October 2025. That is about a fifth of the film and television minimum, with full contributions. Non-union leads in the same format reportedly negotiate $1,000 to $1,500.
Corporate and industrialA common real case
$809
Total employer cost of a Category One on camera day, or $1,006 for Category Two. A $1,500 non-union industrial day beats the first by about 85 per cent and the second by about half.
Regional voiceoverTwelve month campaign
Close
The non-union guide gives $1,500 to $1,800 in hand. Union session plus a thirteen week wild spot is about $1,485 in hand. Non-union may pay more in pocket for a regional buy.
National voiceoverThe same comparison, scaled up
Union, 3×
A national cable year pays $10,125 plus session against the non-union guide’s $3,200 to $3,500. The bigger the campaign, the worse non-union does.
A non-union commercial beating union scaleFor national usage
None found
We searched for one directly and repeatedly. The highest documented non-union commercial figure anywhere is $3,000. A big private deal would rarely be published, so we say nobody has published one rather than that none exists.
There is a fifth advantage that is not a rate at all, and it matters more than any of these. There is simply more non-union work, particularly for beginners.
The union’s own numbers make that hard to argue with. Against roughly 160,000 members, the pension plan counted 21,202 active participants in its 2024 plan year.
What you actually lose, and what it is worth
The money is the easy part of this comparison. The harder part is that a union contract buys an enforcement apparatus, and non-union work buys a civil claim.
Start with the thing that has no non-union analogue whatsoever. A signatory producer posts a security deposit of 40 to 100 per cent of all performer salaries before principal photography begins.
The union can deduct from it, and it is released only once the producer shows everyone was paid. A non-union performer has no bond, no escrow and no priority claim on anything.
What a union contract guarantees in writingAnd what stands in its place otherwise
Money held before the shootFinancial assurance
40 to 100%
Of all performer salaries including contributions, posted before principal photography. Non-union has nothing equivalent at any budget level.
A claims processSomebody else does the chasing
Included
Covers non-payment, late payment, rest period violations, meal penalties and fitting fees, with a representative assigned. Deadlines are six months for principals and as little as 30 days for background. Non-union: hire a lawyer or use small claims.
Do Not Work ordersEnforcement with teeth
180+ live
Around a hundred and eighty active notices on the day we looked, triggered by non-payment and contract violations. Non-union producers cannot be listed anywhere, because there is no list.
Nudity and simulated sexWritten consent
Rider
A rider specifying the intimacy and body parts shown, given at least 48 hours before call, on a closed set, with consent withdrawable at any time before filming without penalty. Actual sex acts are prohibited outright.
Intimacy coordinatorsExtended in 2026
Best efforts
Producers must use best efforts to engage one for background nudity and simulated sex under the agreement in force from 1 July 2026. The first intimacy coordinator union contract was ratified this year.
Digital replicasNegotiated framework
1.5 fees
48 hours notice, consent by rider, and 1.5 session fees per commercial. The standard non-union day player agreement grants rights in all media throughout the universe with no residuals.
Stunt safetyCoordinator obligations
Written
The coordinator must report contract violations to the union and take any action necessary for performer safety. The 2026 agreement adds a committee on safe rehearsal conditions.
MinorsAn important nuance
Both
Trust account law is state statute and applies regardless of union status. But only if the employer complies, and only a union production has a body checking.
What this looks like when it goes wrong, which is the honest way to price it.
A roughly twelve million dollar independent film with two well known leads lost about two million in financing last year. Cast and crew went unpaid and the original production company filed for bankruptcy.
The union issued a Do Not Work order. One of the leads refused to film or promote until everyone was paid back in full. That is the machinery working on a production that had it.
A non-union production in the same position produces one outcome. Unpaid performers holding a civil claim against a bankrupt company.
One more thing sits alongside the money, and it is observable on any mixed set. Union background actors are treated materially better than the non-union background actors standing next to them.
Boarding buses first and being paid from departure, earlier meal access, and priority at wrap. Guaranteed pay when a call is cancelled inside twenty-four hours.
Getting in, and what it costs to stay
Two things surprise people here: non-union work counts for nothing toward eligibility, and once you are in, working non-union becomes a disciplinary matter.
The routes in are narrow and precise. One day in a principal or speaking role, or three days as a background actor, both on covered work. Or a year in an affiliated union with a paid principal credit.
Every route requires employment under a collective bargaining agreement with a signatory company. Non-union work generates none of the documents required, so it earns no credit, not even partial.
The rules and the pricesFrom the union’s own pages, read 8 September 2026
Initiation feeOnce, on joining
$3,121
Lower in some states, payable with your first dues instalment. Several ranking pages still publish $3,000, which comes from a form last revised in 2018.
Annual base duesTwo instalments
$246.14
Plus working dues of 1.575 per cent of covered earnings. The cap is one million dollars, not the $500,000 or $750,000 two competing pages still publish.
Health eligibilityEarnings in a four quarter period
$28,090
For 2026, rising each year to $31,616 by 2030. The widely quoted $26,000 is a 2023 figure. An alternative route needs at least 108 eligibility days.
Health premiumsParticipant only, quarterly
$375
Rising to $390 from 1 January 2027, as adopted on 27 August 2026. With two or more dependants it is $747, rising to $780.
Global Rule OneAfter you join
Enforced
No member may render services, or make an agreement to perform services, for a producer with no union agreement. It covers student films and industrials. The union caught more than 130 members on non-union ads in one year.
Right to work statesA common misunderstanding
No exemption
Members remain bound by all membership rules, Global Rule One included. What changes is that you need not join in the first place when hired on a union production there.
Taft-HartleyHow a non-member gets hired
15 days
The producer files a report within fifteen days, or twenty-five for overnight location work, with your headshot and a justification. Principal filings take six to eight weeks to process.
Financial coreThe way to work both sides
2.6%
4,486 fee paying non-members against 171,157 active members at the last audited count. It is resignation, not a tier, and it forfeits pension and health plan eligibility entirely.
One producer side rule explains the two tier sets people describe. Minimum covered background counts are 26 for television and 85 for large theatrical pictures under the 2026 agreement.
Beyond those counts a producer may fill with non-union background. That is how union and non-union performers end up doing identical work on the same day for very different money.
How big each world is, and why only half of it can be counted
The asymmetry that runs through this whole subject shows up here too. One side files audited returns and the other does not exist on paper at all.
Even the union side is thinner than you would expect. There is no current, dated, authoritative membership figure in public.
The union’s own site says approximately 160,000 and carries no date. The last audited count was 171,157 active dues paying members in April 2022. We are quoting a range rather than pretending to a number.
What is actually countedAnd what the figures mean
MembershipUndated
~160,000
From the union’s own about page, with no date on it. The last audited figure was 171,157 in April 2022.
Actively workingBest available proxy
21,202
Active participants in the pension plan for the 2024 plan year, from the annual funding notice. 10,060 employers were obligated to contribute. A plan term rather than a headcount of who worked.
Qualifying for health coverOn the record
14%
The union’s own chief economist, named and quoted, in 2023. Only 7 per cent earn $80,000 or more. This is the best attributed statistic in the whole subject.
Actors in the workforceFederal statistics
67,500
Jobs in 2025, with a median of $29.05 an hour and no projected growth to 2035. The agency publishes an hourly median rather than an annual one, precisely because the work is intermittent.
The non-union marketProductions, performers, spend
Uncounted
No measurement of any kind exists. A campaign group claimed upwards of 60 per cent of commercials are non-union and the union declined to confirm or deny it. No method, no period.
Total member earningsAnnual
Not published
The most recent aggregate we found is $1.5 billion across four months of 2021. The union does not publish an annual total.
A trap worth naming, because it has an order of magnitude in it.
A widely shared headline says the union collected a billion dollars in its first ten years. That is dues and fees, not member earnings.
The underlying filings show about $101.8 million in member dues and agency fees in one year. Anybody quoting it as what members earned has misread it badly, and in the wrong direction.
We could not close this gap properly ourselves. Deriving total covered earnings would need a pension filing we did not pull, and we would rather say so than estimate.
Forty-six pages, and the thing none of them does
We ran eight query families and opened every distinct page that addressed union against non-union pay. The pattern is the cleanest we have found on any subject so far.
Forty-six pages, read on 8 September 2026Sourcing, currency and method
Pages doing a total compensation comparisonThe whole point
Zero
Not one adds contributions, residuals and penalty exposure to a day rate. Zero price meal penalties, overtime, per diem or mileage. Zero mention the security deposit.
Pages giving a non-union dollar figureOf forty-six
Twenty
Of those twenty, only four name an external checkable source, two describe their own unpublished collection, and fourteen name nothing at all.
Pages saying no non-union scale existsThe premise of this page
Five
One states it cleanly. Another page states the opposite outright, describing minimal pay standards set for non-union work, which do not exist.
Pages with a current union figureOf the eighteen that give one
Two
The rest are stale by one to four contract cycles. One labels a day rate of $1,056 as a 2025 to 2026 scale rate, which is several cycles old.
Pages quantifying plan contributionsRather than mentioning them
Five
Two give roughly 18 cents in the dollar, one gives 19.1 per cent, two give the correct 23.5 for commercials. None multiplies a day rate by any of them.
Pages naming the Verticals AgreementIn a rates comparison
Zero
Announced in October 2025. Zero also note that the Micro-Budget and New Media agreements carry no union minimum, which is the strongest honest argument for non-union work anybody could make.
One error deserves naming because of who made it. A payroll company’s 2026 rates guide, updated on 1 July 2026, publishes the commercial session fee as $783.10 on camera.
It states the validity as April 2026 onward, which is the exact window in which the figure is $855.20. The page hyperlinks the correct rate sheet while displaying the superseded numbers.
The arithmetic confirms it, because $783.10 raised by the contractual five per cent gives $822.26, which is last year’s rate. Its theatrical table on the same page is right, so this is a slip rather than a stale page.
Grading the sources
This page argues that half its own subject cannot be measured. That obliges us to be unusually clear about which of our own numbers are solid and which are not.
The claim, and how far we would push itWhat we found
Every union rate on the pageUnion rate sheets
Primary
Read 8 September 2026. The commercial session fees verify against last year at exactly the contractual four per cent, to the cent, in both columns.
No non-union dataset existsOur central claim
Exhaustive
An absence rather than a positive finding, but one we tested hard. Confirmed independently by a casting director, by the union, and by the pages publishing the figures.
The laundered background figureTraced to origin
Broken chain
Two sites attribute it to a publication whose current article says something else. Either that article was revised, or the figure never had a source. We cannot tell which.
Every non-union range we quoteUncited by origin
Directional
We print them because they are what exists, and we say what they are. None should be treated as a rate you can rely on.
The Verticals Agreement ratesA producer side guide
Second hand
The union’s own sample agreement is a document we could not extract. The $250 and $468.75 figures come from a June 2026 guide, not from the union.
The 14 per cent health figureA named union economist
Attributed
On the record in 2023, against a threshold that has since risen. The looser 87 per cent framing that circulates is the same claim, worse sourced.
Commercial overtime worked examplesTwo printed units
Unresolved
The rate sheet prints quarter hour units that appear to be straight time building blocks rather than the premium rate. We have given the hourly figures and not built a worked overtime example on them.
Non-union industrial and corporate ratesAs a category
No source
Only the general band that circulates with no attribution. We have used it to make one comparison and labelled it.
The share of commercials made non-unionWidely quoted
Unverified
The 60 per cent claim comes from a campaign group with no method and no measurement period, and the union declined to confirm or deny it. We have not printed it as fact.
Turnaround and wardrobe figuresTwo secondary sources disagreed
Omitted
Neither is a primary rate sheet and they conflict. We have left them off the page rather than pick one.
Where we differ from the standard account
What does non-union pay?
Commonly saidA range of dollar figures, given on twenty of forty-six pages as though measured.
What we foundFour of those twenty name a source. There is no non-union dataset anywhere, and the only floor is the minimum wage.
What do non-union background actors get?
Commonly said$100 to $200 a day, on seven sites, two of which attribute it to a named publication.
What we foundThat publication now says local minimum wage, at $17.28 in Los Angeles and $16.50 in New York.
Are there non-union scale rates?
Commonly saidSome productions follow minimal pay standards set for non-union work, on one ranking page.
What we foundNo such standards exist. Scale is a union concept and there is no non-union equivalent of any kind.
How should the two be compared?
Commonly saidDay rate against day rate, on all forty-six pages we read.
What we foundTotal against total. A union commercial day is about $13,406 including a year of cable use, against a documented non-union top of $2,500.
Does union always pay better?
Commonly saidYes, on union facing pages, without qualification.
What we foundNot always. Two union agreements carry no minimum at all, and non-union industrial and regional voiceover can genuinely beat scale.
Does non-union work count toward joining?
Commonly saidRarely addressed directly, and often left ambiguous.
What we foundIt counts for nothing. Every route requires a signatory employer, and non-union work produces none of the documents.
Can I do non-union work once I join?
Commonly saidDiscouraged, and often described as a grey area, particularly in right to work states.
What we foundGlobal Rule One bars it worldwide, including student films. Right to work changes nothing for a member.
What does joining cost?
Commonly said$3,000 initiation, about $230 dues, health at around $26,000 of earnings.
What we found$3,121, $246.14, and $28,090 for 2026. The working dues cap is a million dollars, not five hundred thousand.
So the honest version of this question is not which pays more. It is that one side of it can be looked up and the other cannot. A union rate is a number in a document you can open, with a process behind it if nobody pays you. A non-union rate is a number one producer said to one actor on one job, and the figures circulating online are not measurements of that world so much as echoes of each other. Compare the whole day rather than the headline, know that two union agreements have no floor in them at all, and treat every non-union figure you read, including the ones on this page, as somebody’s recollection rather than a rate.
