One reason people might not pay for a ventriloquist is that they think the performance is worthless. But a new study suggests that some performers may actually do better than other performers in their day jobs.
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The researchers looked at the earnings of 37 people, most of whom are in their 20s and 30s. The work they do involves performing as a puppet for a variety of people dressed up in various costumes. For the study, the researchers created a system—you can play with this prototype here—in which a performer is paid based on how often they appear on TV as the character they play. For example, if they appear on live television for three times, they are paid an hourly rate. The highest paid actor, named “Mike,” had an hourly rate of $15 per hour. The next highest paid was “Beth,” at $12.53 an hour. (There is no hourly wage for “Kenny” because she appeared on several hours last year for free.)
The study found that, on average, the ventriloquist’s hourly rate was $8.30. There were two main differences from an hourly wage, says Eric Anderson, who supervised the work for the team of researchers. “One is that the person that you hire is not the highest paid, they are an employee. So if you pay them on a time rate it won’t be that much higher.” Another is that there are a number of performers, all of whom earned a percentage of the total amount paid; some performed on TV shows that paid more, and others only performed a certain number of times.
The researchers found a number of performers (including Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali) earned a higher hourly rate than the highest paid person on the list of average earners. It’s likely that each of these acts paid a different percentage for the hours that were performed, and there were a bunch of factors that worked to raise or lower those figures for each performer.
Most of the performers that the researchers found earned a higher hourly rate than average; most of these performers performed a few hours per day, so one might expect that some performers would have more of a high rate and others a lower rate.
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The study also looked at how frequently the performers performed. The highest paid actor, Mike, performed a single day in 2012, when he only had an average of 7 hours
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