Skillset/UK Film Council Feature Film Production Workforce Survey 2008

2.4 Ethnic background

The vast majority of the sample described themselves as white, with only 5% belonging to an ethnic minority group, the same proportion found in the first  film production workforce survey.  This is slightly lower than the ethnic minority profile of the wider audio visual workforce (7%), as reported in the 2005 Survey of the Audio Visual Industries’ Workforce, and in the UK workforce as a whole. Recent LFS data reports the proportion of ethnic minorities in the UK workforce is 7%.

The film industry workforce is concentrated in London (as discussed in more detail in section 2.6), and a comparison between the London-based film survey respondents with the London-based workforce as a whole reveals an even starker difference.  London's workforce is made up of 24% people from an ethnic minority background, compared with only 7% of the London-based film survey respondents.

Table 2.4.1 Ethnic background

Table 2.4.2 Ethnic background of London-based respondents

The proportion of ethnic minorities in the workforce is higher in the youngest age groups (7% of 16-24 year olds, dropping to 3% of respondents aged 50 or older). The numbers are too small in the sub-groups to test for statistical significance. This is a similar pattern to that reported in the 2005 Survey of the Audio Visual Industries’ Workforce, and remains largely unchanged from the first film production workforce survey.

There was a small, statistically significant difference by gender, with more women from ethnic minorities than men in the workforce. There was no significant difference by occupational group.

Table 2.4.3 Ethnic background by age

Table 2.4.4 Ethnic background by gender