I don't doubt that you have seen what you say you have seen
But I don't know if you have enough information to evaluate how much illustrators are being paid.
Keep in mind that you will never see a large proportion of the job on Upwork.
You live in California.
Illustrators like these have hourly rates that are certainly higher than minimium wage, including rates at over $100 per hour, and they are working extensively.
https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~0195ad8b7f9a840e16/
53 jobs completed - $110/hour
https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/timsloth
18 jobs completed - $100/hour
https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/maurog11
34 jobs - $170/hour
https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~0100b557f7c9acb40f/
148 hobs - $40/hour
I was able to quickly find dozens of California illustrators earning considerably more than minimum wage. It looks like there are probably hundreds of freelancers in that category.
I personally hire a lot of artists, including ones who live in California as well as other states and other countries. I am rarely able ot hire the artists I want at minimum wage. I need to pay a lot more than minimum wage to get what I want. It is highly likely that you don't see my job posts, though, because I leave my job postings up for a very short time while I hire high-quality artists based on what I see in their portfolios. And I rarely post jobs as fixed-price - I usually use hourly contracts and hire artists using their posted hourly rate. So if you are only looking at fixed-price contract budgets, you are not going to see the fully picture.
re: "Am I the only one who thinks that almost ALL projects (art related) here are underpaid?"
I don't hire artists and other freelancers based on where they live. In the past few months, I have hired people from a wide variety of places, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, etc.
To help provide context to my answer to your question, I looked up some numbers, and I saw that paid some freelancers about up to about 50 times the minimum wage in their country. So it is possible that I am contributing to financial disruption in their neighborhoods, if some freelancers are getting paid too much and are being obnoxious about it.
But I don't care.
I post jobs and hire freelancers on Upwork based on the benefit they provide to ME. My decisions are based on what a freelancer's work costs ME, and what type of artwork or other work they can provide to ME. If their posted hourly rate means they are making far more than they deserve relative to their cost of living, or if means they get paid less than minimum wage in the place that they live, then that's not something I check into and not something I care about.
