Anime is much the same. Licensing into the west only started in earnest in the last 10-15 years, which late by a lot of standards. I'm sure there are still a small slice of folks who can ink these deals, therefore giving anyone a job at all.
Also let's be real - most 'animators' are just tracing masters into different scenes. There's a small subset of them that are highly skilled, especially on non-original shows that use source material. I'd support paying true character artists and scene artists well, but not copy-pasters which seems like busy-work.
Any kind of media production involves a lot of grunt work. In general, you don't get anywhere in the arts without putting in a lot of hours on that sort of thing, during which you still need to eat and pay rent. Critiquing the production process over which they have no control to justify paying subpar wages is pretty mean-spirited.
Also let's be real - most 'animators' are just tracing masters into different scenes. There's a small subset of them that are highly skilled, especially on non-original shows that use source material. I'd support paying true character artists and scene artists well, but not copy-pasters which seems like busy-work.