HOLLYWOOD LOST 42,000 JOBS

Via Occupy Cinema (@cinemaoccupy)

Between 2022 and the end of 2024, Los Angeles County’s film and TV industry went from about 142,000 jobs to about 100,000, according to federal labor data. That’s roughly 42,000 jobs, close to a third of the workforce.

Filming fell with it. FilmLA counted 36,792 shoot days in 2022 and 19,694 in 2025, a 46% drop. Television took the worst of it, at about half its five-year average.

Several things hit at once: the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, the January 2025 fires, and productions moving to places with bigger tax breaks. At a Senate field hearing in Burbank in March, actor Noah Wyle called it “a near-cratering of our once thriving industry.”