Vincent CARDON
july 2017
20 p.

Almost 14,000 retired entertainment industry workers now receive a retirement pension at the end of an “intermittent” career, i.e. a career based on a succession of short-term contracts. Since 1989, their number has dramatically increased, following on from the growth in entertainment industry professionals and the rise project based employment practices over the last thirty years.These professionals’ basic pensions rely on a legislation that is common to all wage earners. They also benefit from a supplementary professional pension, paid by Audiens.

On average, intermittent workers retire at the age of 62, and the vast majority of them (93%) benefit from a full pension. In 2009, the annual average total pension paid to former intermittent workers in the entertainment industry is 18,180 euros, i.e. 1,520 euros a month.

The average amount of total pensions is falling, due to the depreciation of basic and supplementary pensions. New generations of retired intermittent receive lower pensions than previous ones, e.g. an intermittent retiring in 2009 would have a pension 10% lower in value than that of another one retiring in 1999. Regarding the basic pension, this is essentially explained by a decrease in the annual reference salary on which it is calculated. The evolution of supplementary pensions is more contrasted: although they decrease overall, they increase for certain categories,

such as artists, thus providing a compensatory effect to their diminishing basic pensions.

Finally, the analysis of pensions over a twenty-year period reveals profound intergenerational, but also professional and gender inequalities. Thus, the total annual pension for artists and technicians who retired in 2009 was almost 13,000 euros per year lower than executives’. Female intermittent professionals generally retire a little later than men, and get a lower pension, which reflects women’s disadvantageous wage progression path. However the gender inequality gap is progressively closing when it comes to retirement pensions. But this phenomenon is more attributable to the decrease of men’s pensions than to an improvement of women’s ones.