Film Industry Jobs Keep Falling Three Years After the Strikes

The US motion picture and sound recording industries employed 329,800 people in August 2026, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. The figure is preliminary, and it is 126,300 below the November 2022 peak of 456,100.

Among people last employed in the sector, the jobless rate rose to 8.7 percent in August from 4.2 percent in May. Governor Gavin Newsom signed new California film credits in September anyway, pitching them as a recovery the national payroll has not yet shown.

How Many People Work in the US Film Industry?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics put 329,800 jobs on August payrolls in motion picture and sound recording, a preliminary Current Employment Statistics figure. That is 126,300 below the November 2022 peak of 456,100. The household survey put unemployment among people last employed in the sector at 8.7 percent, up from 4.2 percent in May.

The count covers NAICS 512, the information-sector group that includes movie and video production, movie theaters, and sound recording. It is a payroll survey of establishments, so freelancers and many loan-out workers never appear. July’s reading was 330,600. June, at 322,300, was the lowest month in the current slide.

The monthly payroll series since the 2022 peak does not look like a strike dip that healed. After the 2023 walkouts, the line kept grinding lower through 2024 and 2025, then again in the first half of 2026. July added jobs off that June floor. August gave almost all of them back.

NATIONAL PAYROLL AT SELECTED DATES

From the peak, the August print is down 27.7 percent. Production and nonsupervisory employees, a narrower CES cut that excludes most managers, numbered 269,600 in July, the latest month published for that line.

Movie Theaters Held Steady as Production Shrank

Most of the long decline sits in production, not in the multiplex. A Bureau of Labor Statistics review in April found production employment 103,900 below its October 2022 high by February 2026, when the line stood at 185,200 against a peak of 289,100.

From February 2016 to February 2026, motion picture and video production shed 49,000 jobs, a 21 percent drop. Exhibition, mostly movie theaters, cut 25,000 jobs over the same decade, a 17 percent decline, and then flattened. Theater payrolls have hovered near 117,000 to 123,000 since mid-2022 even as production kept falling.

Production had already recouped a 109,000-job pandemic loss, from 244,800 in February 2020 to a trough of 135,800 in May 2020, before the 2022 high. The next break did not reverse. The Writers Guild struck from May 2 to September 27, 2023. SAG-AFTRA struck from July 14 to November 9, 2023. The BLS April review said those stoppages fed a downtrend that was still running in early 2026.

THE SLIDE FROM PEAK TO THE LATEST PRINT

1. October 2022: Motion picture and video production employment hits 289,100.
2. May 2, 2023: The Writers Guild strike begins.
3. July 14, 2023: SAG-AFTRA joins the shutdown.
4. November 9, 2023: The actors’ strike ends. National 512 payrolls do not return to the 2022 peak.
5. February 2026: Production employment stands at 185,200.
6. August 2026: The broader film and recording payroll prints 329,800.

Studios also commissioned less work after the streaming boom cooled. ProdPro, a production-tracking firm, found live-action scripted US starts budgeted at $40 million or more down 37 percent from 2021 to 2025. That cut lands on crews before it lands on a marquee.

THE WEIGHTS ON THE PAYROLL

• The 2023 shutdown: Writers stopped out from May 2 to September 27, and actors from July 14 to November 9, and the rebound never reached the old peak.
• Fewer big shoots: US live-action scripted starts at $40 million and up fell 37 percent from 2021 to 2025, per ProdPro.
• Work leaving town: Stages in the United Kingdom, Canada, Georgia, and New Jersey keep winning the same slates Los Angeles used to hold.

Exhibition is the part of the sector that looks like a floor. Production is the part that still has no floor.

Los Angeles Film Jobs Have Fallen to 1993 Levels

The national number hides how local the damage is. BLS state and area payrolls for Los Angeles County, series SMU06310845051200001, averaged 149,800 motion picture and sound recording jobs in 2022. Through July 2026 the monthly average is 99,400.

That is 50,400 jobs, or 33.6 percent, off the 2022 average. From the February 2022 high of 161,100, the drop is 61,700 jobs, or 38.3 percent. 2025 was the lowest full year in that county file since 1993. The 2026 year-to-date average sits below every complete year in the record except 1992, at 94,800, and 1993, at 93,900.

The strikes ended in November 2023. Employment did not climb back to the year that contained them. 2023 averaged 109,800 jobs in the county. 2026 through July runs 10,400 below that strike-year average, and below 2023 in six of seven months. July 2026, at 97,300, was the exception, just above July 2023’s 94,200. The strike-year low was 91,700 in September 2023, after a February 2023 reading of 135,300.

The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages put film at 92.2 percent of the Los Angeles 512 total in 2025, so the series is mostly pictures, not music. It still misses self-employed workers and a large share of people paid through payroll companies classified under employment services. The jobs the survey can see are the ones that vanished.

Film also explains most of the county’s Information-sector loss. Information payrolls fell 65,700, or 27.7 percent, from February 2020 to July 2026. Take motion picture and sound recording out and the rest of Information is down 10,500. Leisure and hospitality, which includes the theme parks next door to the lots, is within 500 jobs of its pre-pandemic level. The production side of the same companies is not.

Union Density Fell as Weekly Hours Stayed Short

The people still on payroll are working short weeks, and fewer of them are in a union than at the 2022 peak. Average weekly hours for all employees in the sector were 24.9 in July. Production and nonsupervisory employees averaged 23.4 hours. Those are not 40-hour shop weeks. They are the hours of intermittent crews and theater staff.

PAY, HOURS, AND UNION SHARE

• Hourly pay: All employees averaged $43.05 in July, and production workers averaged $30.84, both preliminary CES figures.
• Weekly hours: 24.9 for all employees and 23.4 for production and nonsupervisory staff in the same month.
• Full-time weekly pay: Median usual weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers in the sector were $1,534 in 2025, per the Current Population Survey.
• Union members: 17.3 percent of wage and salary workers in 2022, 12.1 percent in 2023, 8.4 percent in 2024, and 11.0 percent in 2025 on an 11-month average that skips October because of the federal shutdown.

Workers represented by unions followed the same arc, from 17.8 percent in 2022 to 12.8 percent in 2025. The 2025 rebound in the share is real in the table and still well below 2022. When union film jobs disappear faster than theater cashier jobs, the remaining mix looks less organized even if the guilds did not shrink on paper.

Inside the industry’s own 2025 occupational file, producers and directors numbered 39,270, with a median wage of $104,350, or $50.17 an hour. Audio and video equipment technicians numbered 8,960, median $61,090. Actors in the industry numbered 19,410; the wage estimate was not released. Cashiers (4,060) and motion picture projectionists (1,030) are still in the mix, a reminder that the sector is theaters as well as sets. Across all industries, producers and directors held about 181,000 jobs in 2025, with a median of $90,360, and $105,300 inside motion picture and video.

Writers who did work were a smaller club. The WGA West annual financial report put 5,072 members reporting earnings in 2025, down from nearly 7,000 in 2022, a 27 percent drop. Those who reported earned $1.7 billion in 2025. The hours that fund crew health care moved the same way. IATSE told members the Motion Picture Industry health plan had 14,000 fewer active health participants than at the 2022 peak, a 20 percent reduction. Contributed hours fell from 121 million in 2022 to 90 million in 2024, and 2025 hours were down 21 percent from the same period a year earlier. The plans had liquidated $185 million that year to pay current benefits.

Output per Hour Rose After Labor Input Collapsed

On paper, the remaining workforce got more done per hour. BLS productivity accounts show labor input in the sector down 14.8 percent in 2023 and 6.5 percent in 2024. Labor productivity, output per hour, jumped 21.0 percent in 2023 and another 6.7 percent in 2024. Output itself fell 1.4 percent in 2024 after a 3.7 percent gain in 2023.

That pattern is what a volume crash looks like in a productivity table. When the extra series, the mid-budget features, and the overflowing writers’ rooms go away, hours fall faster than finished output. Combined inputs fell 2.9 percent in 2024. Capital input still rose 1.7 percent. Shops did not close at the same pace as jobs.

Private establishments in the sector numbered 39,797 in the first quarter of 2026, preliminary, against 39,310 in the second quarter of 2025. The quarterly census counted 39,903 shops in the fourth quarter of 2025. More letterheads, fewer people on each one. Local government added 7 establishments and the federal government 6, unchanged across those quarters.

The injury file is small and grim in a different way: 2 workplace fatalities in 2023, 5 in 2024, and a 2024 total-recordable rate of 1.5 cases per 100 full-time workers. It is not the employment story. It is a reminder that the jobs that remain are still physical work on sets and in booths.

New Tax Credits Chase Work That Already Left

Sacramento’s answer arrived after the payroll had already reset lower. In July 2025 California raised its Film and Television Tax Credit from $330 million a year to $750 million. On September 19, 2026, Newsom signed a standalone post-production credit, Assembly Bill 2319, and Senate Bill 186, which sweetens refundability on the existing program and carves out independent productions.

The governor’s office said the expanded program had awarded 170 projects expected to bring more than $6.6 billion in economic activity and nearly 35,000 cast and crew jobs. Those are jobs attached to approved projects, not the CES payroll. Since 2009 the state program has been credited with more than $34.2 billion in activity and more than 243,000 cast and crew jobs, a cumulative marketing total that sits beside a county series now running at 1993 levels.

This legislation protects the extraordinary people who make this industry possible and makes it unmistakably clear: California is still the future of film and television. We have the talent. We have the infrastructure. We have the creative community. And we have an ecosystem that simply cannot be replicated anywhere else.

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, September 19, 2026

Editors Guild National Executive Director Scott George called it a historic day for members and said AB 2319 would let projects that shoot elsewhere still finish in California. Arlen Valdivia, vice president of state government affairs at the Motion Picture Association, said the bills would keep the state’s competitiveness. Marielle Abaunza, president of the California Post Alliance, said the first standalone post-production incentive gave hope to crews in editorial, sound, and visual effects.

Union pressure is what moved the independent-film language. The Art Directors Guild said members and other Hollywood locals sent 450,000 letters after a summer budget bill threatened the jobs program, and that SB 186 restored refundability, timelines, and an independent carve-out.

The California Film and Television Jobs Program has been threatened in recent weeks by California budget bill 122. The urgency and action taken by @IATSE #adg800 members (and members of other Hollywood unions) led to an unprecedented 450,000 letters being sent to the California… pic.twitter.com/sPYxVigQ2s

— Art Directors Guild (@ADG800) September 2, 2026

The carve-out is the piece that actually changes a small crew’s math. A headline of nearly 35,000 jobs on awarded projects does not put a day on a timesheet if the production never locks financing, and it does not show up in CES until an establishment adds people. Tax-credit design is how a short independent actually staffs a world, not a footnote under a jobs presser.

Crews already treat those two ledgers as different books. One is a Sacramento awards list. The other is the BLS payroll, the MPI hour count, and the Los Angeles monthly file that is running below the strike year. Credits can pull a slate back. They have not, as of the August survey, rebuilt the 126,300 jobs missing from November 2022.

Newsom signed the new credits on September 19. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish September payrolls on October 2, 2026, the next reading of whether any of that money has shown up as jobs.