Many thanks to all of you who have responded. I'm still curious to know what goes in various areas, so I welcome more info if it's out there.
Indeed, it seems the rates vary pretty significantly from region to region. But many of the rates I've seen in these replies are bad news, because whether we're talking about 3K a week with the potential to work 12 hour days, or $500 for ten hours, that's still a baseline rate of about $50 per hour. I can tell you that editors in cable broadcast were earning that in my relatively small market back in 1997, and I'm referring to the precise amount, not an inflation adjusted number. The one outlier rate posted, from the editor that quoted $700 a day for cable broadcast in the LA market, seems more like what we should be making by now.
As an exercise, plug $50 into an inflation calculator, and you get $67.61 in 2010 dollars (which is as recent as calculator will go). I'm not the greatest at math, so check me here, but doesn't this mean that some editors are earning approximately 73% of what they made in the 90s? That's not great news for the post production worker bee.
As many of you might have surmised, my inquiry was motivated by the perception that it's high time to raise my own rates, which haven't budged by a penny in 10 years. Is this a good idea? I'm just not sure, but it would probably be easier to raise my rates if I weren't the only one doing it. And something tells me that if cable broadcasters can pay $700 a day in LA, they can probably pay it everywhere if they know they have to.
Thanks again for all the good info. This list, as always, is a proving to be a real treasure.
Best,
Shirley
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