Hollywood Is Dying—42,000 Jobs Gone in Just 2 Years
If you work in entertainment, you probably heard some variation of this last year: "Survive 'til '25."
Things have been bleak. In a recent article from The Wall Street Journal, the reporting goes as far as to call Los Angeles' production prospects "a disaster movie."
The numbers are stark.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 100,000 people were employed in Los Angeles County's motion picture industry at the end of 2024. Two years earlier, that figure stood at 142,000.
That's a loss of 42,000 jobs—nearly a third of the workforce—in just 24 months.
The decline shows no signs of stopping.
WSJ's report paints a now-familiar picture—an Oscar-winning sound mixer who can't find a gig, an animator who worked on Pocahontas who's out of work. These are talented people having to recalibrate everything they know about Hollywood.
FilmLA, the official film office for the city and county, reported that on-location production was down 22% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
Television production has been especially hard-hit. The region reached a peak of 18,560 annual shoot days in 2021. By 2024, that number had plummeted to just 7,716. It's a 58.4% decline in three years.
Paul Audley, president of FilmLA, told NBC Los Angeles that 2024 was "the worst year on record, excluding COVID."
The first quarter of 2025 looks even worse. Every major category of production, from television dramas to commercials, logged fewer shoot days compared to the year before.
Why Is This Happening?
What's driving this collapse? Multiple factors have made this unemployment stew.
We have not yet recovered from the WGA and SAG strikes. The streaming bubble has burst, with major companies pulling back on content spending after years of explosive growth. The fires uprooted many on the west side of the city, and rebuilding is slow, so some have opted to leave town.
California has also lost significant ground to competitors. Audley said the state now ranks sixth in the world for filming, behind Toronto, the U.K., Vancouver, central Europe, and Australia. Between 2020 and 2024, an estimated 71% of projects that failed to secure California's tax credits moved out of state.
The Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actors Fund) reported distributing more than $5.6 million to almost 3,000 people in the first half of 2024. That's nearly six times the pre-pandemic average.
The organization's Western region executive director, Keith McNutt, said that requests for mental health services, career counseling, and support groups have surged (via Sherwood News).
The Art Directors Guild reported in 2024 that 75% of its 3,000 members are currently unemployed (via Indiewire). The guild also suspended its Production Design Initiative program, which offers paid training in various art department roles, because there simply aren't enough jobs for trainees.
Unemployment in film and TV hit 16.1% in June 2024. Writer Morgan Evans said on TikTok that the figure was "worse than half as bad as the Great Depression."
The entertainment industry's August unemployment rate was 10.9%, more than double the national average (4.3%).
Workers across all corners of the industry are struggling. It's not just writers and actors and production folks who typically face employment gaps. Salaried employees in marketing, development, and accounting (traditionally more stable positions) are also finding it challenging to maintain work.
Governor Gavin Newsom proposed expanding California's Film & Television Tax Credit Program in October 2024, calling for the annual cap to double from $330 million to $750 million.
But with production continuing to decline in 2025, the question remains whether policy intervention can reverse the exodus of work from LA.
*******************************************************
**************************************
**********************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment