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Hollywood Writer Rooms Still Mostly White, Male and Young

Jon Stewart and his writers at the Emmy Awards

And so the saga continues…

A new report from the Writers Guild of America West shows that writers’ rooms in Hollywood are still lacking in diversity.

The study, titled “2011 Hollywood Writers Report,” examines employment status and earnings based on age, gender and ethnicity for writers in 2008 and 2009.

“The current recession has done little to help women, minority and older writers move ahead in the Hollywood industry relative to their male, white and younger counterparts,” the report says.

Among the findings is the fact that the share of minority writers working in TV rebounded to 2005 levels (10%), but the report noted that minorities are still underrepresented by a ratio of 3-to-1. The earnings gap for minorities widened to its largest level in at least 10 years ($23,325).

In film, the ratio is 7-to-1, with the share of minorities employed in writing jobs declining to its lowest level in at least 10 years (5%). But the earnings gap shrunk from $38,542 in 2007 to $20,864 in 2009.

Meanwhile, the percentage of working writers who were women dropped by one percentage point from 2007 levels to 24% in 2009. In addition, the earnings gap between male and female TV writers increased from $5,109 in 2007 to $9,400 in 2009. On the film side, the gap shrunk to its lowest level in eight years ($14,017).

Elsewhere, the employment rate for the largest group of “older writers,” defined as those aged 41-50, has remained flat at 61% since 2005.