Hollywood has yet to recover the jobs in film and television production that were lost when strikes by writers and actors brought production to a halt in 2023 as the industry was shifting, according to a report released Thursday.
The report by the Otis College of Art and Design found that jobs in the entertainment sector in 2024 remained 25 percent below their 2022 peak, when the industry was working to make up for time lost during the pandemic shutdown.
One measure of production, the number of shooting days in Los Angeles County, decreased by 42 percent last year compared to 2022, according to the report.
“The film, TV, and sound sector appears to be settling into a new normal characterized by lower employment and production levels when compared to its pre-strike peak,” the report said.
Michael F. Miller Jr., a vice president at the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees who oversees film and television production for the union, said that over the two-year period from 2022 to 2024, roughly 18,000 full-time jobs had evaporated. One recent survey of more than over 700 crew members found that almost two in three reported that their income fell short of expectations last year.
The new report found that the entertainment sector added almost 15,000 jobs last year, but that the gains were not enough to make up for all the jobs lost during the strikes.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence pointing to a crisis for Hollywood’s work force. Experts and industry workers alike say that some combination of the pandemic, the strikes and the end of peak streaming have created an untenable situation for the workers who make up Hollywood’s middle class.
With such little work to go around over the last two years, writers, artists, set designers, camera operators and the many other people who power the industry have found side gigs or left Los Angeles entirely. Some who have been without work for many months lost their homes in the wildfires that ripped through parts of Los Angeles in January.
Hollywood also faces stiff competition from other states and other countries that try to lure production away from California with generous tax incentives. Several coalitions were formed after the fires to try to keep more productions — and jobs — in Los Angeles.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has pushed to more than double California’s film and TV tax incentive program. And state lawmakers have proposed bills that would make more types of productions eligible for incentives.
A group of state lawmakers held a hearing on the tax credit program in Sacramento on Wednesday in which some advocates for more funding argued that California was falling behind, and that the people who work in the industry were paying the price.
“I had constituents who were calling the office, letting me know that they had been out of work for, in some cases, six months, nine months, one year, in some cases two years,” Rick Chavez Zbur, a state assemblyman who introduced one of the new bills, said in an interview this week. “From my perspective, this is a jobs bill.”
