I've been hanging out in here, reading employment horror stories as well as great resignation stories for a bit now and just wanted to pass this information along.

I've been lucky to be able to live (and help support my family) through freelancing in the Live Entertainment industry since 2005.

Quick backstory/information; I am 41, graduated highschool in '99 with hopes and dreams, went to Film school with more hopes and dreams, graduated that in '04 with luckily no student loan dept (I was lucky enough to get a partial scholarship as well as my parents being able to take care of te rest of the costs). I did however pay my way through college life, going to school full time and working as a warehouse worker/delivery driver for a furniture store. My wife and I have been together since highschool and we got married my junior hear in college. We were a 2 income household from the day we moved in with each other while I was in school. I know this is not typical and I am lucky that this afforded us to not rack up a lot of dept early on.

Anyways, after a couple of delivery jobs (I worked at that store all through college until we moved cross country after graduation) and stumbling along the way as our 2 children were born, I found my way into the live event industry.

Craigslist is to thank here, and I have worked my way up in skills and positions over the years, bit here's the gist of the industry, just as information for those looking for extra work or something to tide them over while looking for the better job, or if this is what you want to do (I love it personally and couldn't do anything else without sacrificing my sanity!)

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This can/will vary slightly from state to state and sometimes from company to company, but not much:

- Work is either Union (IATSE) or non-union. Nothing stops you from doing both, you are a freelancer (I chose to not work with my local IATSE as there is bad blood between me and the organization.

- You work on your schedule. This is all event based, you can say no to any job that is thrown your way, no reason needed (so great for weekends, evening, as a 2nd job) all you need is good time management skills

- By OSHA LAW, you are given (and any and all employers are required) a 15 minute break every 2-2/12 hours, a meal break every 5-5/12 hours (sometimes at 4 hours) The meal break is usually a 30 minute paid, food provided on site break, or a 60 minute unpaid, you fend for yourself break

- This one varies from company by company and venue by venue, but details are similar; you work minimums, usually 4 or 5 hour, meaning that once a job starts, you are paid for 4 or 5 hours, whether the job takes 4-5 hours or 30 minutes. This usually only comes into play during teardowns but I have shown up to a gig with a crew to jobs that literally took 10 minutes and we got paid for 4 hours.

- workdays can be as short as a 4 hour minimum up to 18 hour days (there is plenty of downtime during this time & everyone knows their own limits, no one is faulted for only taking the short shifts, however, personally the pay is def. worth it for me)

- Every company/Venue has their own pay scales, and obviously IATSE work pays more than non, personally I make anywhere from $25-45 an hour, depending on the job/position

- Overtime pay is abundant, after 40 hours a week with each company, on certain days, during certain times of the day, after a certain amount of hours worked during a day etc. So that 18 hour day I was talking about earlier could be 14 hours of overtime pay and 4 hours of regular pay, even if it is the first gig that pay period (I can explain this if anyone has questions)

- It is a physical job with some requirements, but they are minimal really and again, you can work as much or as little as you like, for as many companies as you like etc.

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I am happy to answer any questions anyone has, and if this is completely inappropriate, I apologize, I was just wanting to help out some of the people on here who are clearly struggling to find something that works for them!