If you haven't yet, watch "The Kingdom Of Dreams and Madness". This short documentary follows the legendary Hayao Miyazaki through the production of "The Wind Rises". It shows the painstaking process or creating a feature an anime film. I think that a lot of animation studios have begun to incorporate 3-D animations because of the reduced costs and saving time. However, Studio Ghibli still does everything by hand.

“If [hand-drawn animation] is a dying craft, we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era.” - Hayao Miyazaki

You can tell from this quote how he feels about the whole industry. Later in the documentary, Miyazaki comments on Studio Ghibli.

"The future is clear. It's going to fall apart."

Even for the big animation studios like Ghibli whose films have impacted millions of people and still inspire some youth today times are tough. You can't expect to become wealthy if you were to pursue animation. It is more of a thing you do for passion and a love of telling stories.