People look up "screenwriter salary" because that is how every other job answers the money question. The useful answer is two numbers, not one. A WGA minimum is the lowest fee a signatory may pay for a named writing step. Around that floor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Writers Guild publish what employed writers actually earn.
A floor is the MBA minimum for a named step — original, rewrite, polish, story and teleplay, a staff week. Use it when a signatory is in the picture and you need the legal number for that step. On spec, pay arrives if the script sells, someone hires you, or a company options the pages.
What the published earnings figures actually show
The Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey puts the median for Writers and Authors at 76,910 dollars a year, on 47,940 wage-and-salary jobs. The mean is 86,090 dollars. That occupation mixes screenwriters with novelists, copywriters, and other writers. It is not a screenwriter-only sample, and it does not count people writing on spec.
WGA West's 2025 financials, as reported by Deadline in August 2026, show 5,072 members reporting covered earnings — down 27 percent from nearly 7,000 in 2022. Those working members generated 1.7 billion dollars in total writer earnings, down 1.3 percent from 2024, while employment fell 10.2 percent year over year. Residuals were 535.5 million dollars, down 4.9 percent. Feature earnings were 521 million dollars, up 7.2 percent, from 2,007 members. Television jobs are down more than 33 percent since 2022; feature jobs are down about 14 percent. The Guild publishes aggregates, not a typical-writer salary, and it omits writers who reported no covered earnings that year. The Guild describes the figures as preliminary as of March 2026.
A covered high-budget original has a Year 1 MBA minimum well above the BLS writers-and-authors median. The screenwriter pay desk puts the floors, the BLS median, and the Guild aggregates on one page so you can read them together.
How to look up the step that matches the deal
The number that matters on a covered job is the named step. Original including treatment is a different floor from a rewrite, a polish, or a page-one rewrite. A half-hour story-and-teleplay is a different clock from an hour, and a pilot is a multiple of that story-and-teleplay — not of story alone or teleplay alone. Staff weeks stack under script fees when you also write episodes. The WGA minimums explorer lets you pick the family and the writing step. Confirm the live Guild schedule before a deal.
Residuals are the reuse check
Publishing and music pay royalties. Covered screen work pays residuals — reuse payments that follow the writing credit, not a share of ticket sales under a book contract. The worldwide theatrical run itself does not pay a residual. Streaming publishes three-year High-Budget SVOD totals. Non-signatory work generally produces none, whatever the deal memo calls the check.
What to do with the numbers
If you are on spec, the nearest useful page is the Submission Center: current contest and fellowship windows. A spec can sell; scale applies after a signatory buys or hires. Confirm whether the company is a signatory before treating any figure as a Guild floor.
If a signatory is already in the picture, look up the named step, then keep the draft that number refers to. Notes expand into another step. Delivery wants the exact file. Plot names a save point so the pass that earned the deal does not disappear under the next one. Start writing free. Export FDX when the office asks.