LOS ANGELES Los Angeles’ share of the local film and television economy shrank last year amid devastating industry struggles, but it still remains the most powerful entertainment player in the United States.
According to the latest Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, released Thursday, the City of Angels posted a 27% share of domestic employment in film and television in 2023 — down 8% from 2022, but still well ahead of its competitor tougher, New York. which accounted for 12% of the entertainment workforce.
Other US manufacturing centers lagged far behind Los Angeles. Each claiming 2% of the entertainment pie last year were Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami; while Nashville, Tenn., Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., each stood at 1% — largely in line with where they stood 10 years ago.
Last year, the entertainment industry was hobbled by six months of overlapping strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Additionally, the Otis report found that workers in Los Angeles County earned 50% of all wages in the local film and television industry last year.
With the exception of New York—long a bastion of production—film and television activity outside of Los Angeles spread evenly to other parts of the country, leading Otis College to conclude that there was no “Hollywood of New” on the horizon.
The new report traces the key decade from 2013 — when Netflix started the streaming revolution with the release of “House of Cards” — to early 2024, just after the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes.
“Los Angeles is still the pinnacle of the entertainment industry, but the industry itself is undergoing once-in-a-generation changes,” Patrick Adler, principal at Westwood Economics and Planning Associates, said in a statement.
“It’s less dependent on film and television studios, more oriented towards creating online content, live events and games, and also much more technical and managerial than ever before. What it means to work in Hollywood is completely different today than 10 years ago.”
According to the study, film and TV currently account for about 52% of the entertainment business in Los Angeles County, coming in at 12% after 2013. Employment levels that include film, TV, sound, broadcast and print media – all tagged “traditional” entertainment fields. from Otis—have similarly declined by approximately 9% from 2013 to 2024.
The decline in the importance of film and TV coincides with a decline in production, which is still down 9% from pre-strike levels, according to the report. Film and television employment in Los Angeles County is 19% lower than it was before the work stoppages – leaving thousands of writers, crew members and other entertainment workers in a state of financial and emotional distress.
Otis College previously reported that entertainment employment in the greater Los Angeles area fell 17% during overlapping writers and actors strikes.
Earlier reporting by The Times illustrates that the production and employment crisis in Los Angeles predates the layoffs and can be largely attributed to a continued industry contraction following overspending by studios during the broadcast wars.
As a result, film, TV, commercial and other production activity in the first quarter of 2024 was about 20% below the five-year average, according to FilmLA, a nonprofit that tracks local production in the Greater Los Angeles area.
Meanwhile, job growth in the “modern” entertainment sectors – identified as software publishing, video games, social media, broadcasting, performing arts, live sports and “independent artists” – increased by 53% between 2013 and 2024, Otis College reported.
The fastest growing corner of the entertainment industry in the county is software publishing (including video games), which has grown by 149% in the past decade. Film, TV and traditional publishing are the only areas that have declined.
The report also determined that the number of college-educated workers in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles increased from 46% to 68% between 2000 and 2022.
Creative and management positions accounted for 59% of entertainment jobs in 2013 and had grown to 66% by 2022. Meanwhile, the number of manual occupations, such as transportation, cleaning, groundskeeping and construction, had declined.
Additionally, the entertainment workforce has become more racially diverse over the past decade. The share of white workers in creative fields decreased between 2013 and 2022, while employment for all other racial groups increased, the report shows.
“I hope the trends identified in this study and our ongoing Otis College Report on the Creative Economy will provide industry leaders and policymakers with insight into the needs of an evolving workforce,” Charles Hirschhorn, president of the College, said in a statement. Otis. one that requires more training, investment and education than ever before.”
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