The Bureau of Labor Statistics has counted motion picture jobs in Los Angeles County every month since January 1990, which is 439 consecutive observations. Only two complete years in that record sit below where 2026 is running.
From 149,800 jobs to 99,400
Motion picture and sound recording employment in Los Angeles County peaked at a monthly 161,100 in February 2022 and averaged 149,800 across that year. Through July 2026 the monthly average is 99,400. Set against the 2022 average, that is a fall of 50,400 jobs, or 33.6 percent, in four years. Measured from the February peak, the drop is 61,700 jobs, or 38.3 percent.
Film employment in Los Angeles is back where it was in 1993
Motion picture and sound recording jobs in Los Angeles County, every month from January 1990 to July 2026, in thousands
2025 was the lowest full year since 1993. 2026 so far is lower still, and the only complete years in the whole record that sit below it are 1992, at 94,800, and 1993, at 93,900.
Three years after the strikes
The Writers Guild struck from 2 May to 27 September 2023 and SAG-AFTRA from 14 July to 9 November. The effect is unmistakable in the monthly file: employment fell from 135,300 in February 2023 to 91,700 in September, a level the county had not seen since the 2020 shutdown and, before that, not since 1993.
The strikes ended nearly three years ago and employment did not return to its pre-strike level. 2023 as a whole averaged 109,800. 2026 so far averages 99,400, which is 10,400 below the strike year’s own average. Month by month, 2026 runs below 2023 in six of its seven months to date. The single exception is July, when this year’s 97,300 sits just above July 2023’s 94,200, and 2023 went lower still in August, September and October.
2026 sits below 2023 in six of its seven months so far
Motion picture and sound recording jobs in Los Angeles County, by month, for the peak year, the strike year and the current year
Film accounts for most of the Information sector’s job losses
Film does not appear in most industry tables. Under the old SIC system motion pictures sat in Services; under NAICS it moved into Information, alongside publishing, broadcasting, telecoms and data processing. That reclassification is why film does not appear in the headline numbers, and why the Information sector’s performance in Los Angeles is hard to read without it.
Information has lost more jobs since the pandemic than any other part of the county economy: 65,700, or 27.7 percent, between February 2020 and July 2026. It is also 33.3 percent below its own peak, which it reached in November 2000.
Film is 84 percent of that decline. Take the motion picture and sound recording jobs out of Information and the rest of the sector, everything from publishing to telecommunications, is down 10,500 over the same period.
Take film out of Information and most of the collapse goes with it
Los Angeles County Information employment and the motion picture and sound recording jobs inside it, monthly, in thousands
| supersector | Feb 2020 | Jul 2026 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education and health services | 863,900 | 1,027,700 | +163,800 |
| Other services | 162,600 | 164,700 | +2,100 |
| Professional and business services | 652,600 | 653,900 | +1,300 |
| Leisure and hospitality | 547,500 | 547,000 | -500 |
| Mining, logging, and construction | 155,300 | 150,300 | -5,000 |
| Government | 598,000 | 574,100 | -23,900 |
| Financial activities | 224,500 | 200,000 | -24,500 |
| Manufacturing | 338,500 | 297,800 | -40,700 |
| Trade, transportation, and utilities | 841,000 | 792,900 | -48,100 |
| Information | 236,900 | 171,200 | -65,700 |
No other part of the Los Angeles economy lost jobs like this
Change in employment by supersector, February 2020 to July 2026, thousands of jobs
Leisure and hospitality, the sector most exposed to the shutdowns, is back to within 500 jobs of where it stood the month before the pandemic. Education and health services has added 163,800 and is now the largest employer in Los Angeles, a position it took in February 2020 and has not given up. Six of the ten supersectors sit further from February 2020 than leisure and hospitality does, and Information is furthest of all, with film accounting for most of its loss.
What the series counts, and what it misses
The series leaves out freelancers and some workers paid through employment-services companies. The self-employed are not in the survey at all, which in this industry is not a small omission, and a great deal of entertainment labor is engaged through payroll companies and loan-outs classified under employment services rather than motion pictures. Those jobs are real and they are in Los Angeles, but they land in a different industry and this series never sees them. Both omissions mean the film workforce is larger than this series shows.
Sound recording sits inside the same category, so part of what is counted here is music rather than film. The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which reports the narrower motion picture and video code separately, put film at 92.2 percent of the total in 2025, which leaves music at about eight percent of the series.
The category definition has not changed since 1990, but the share of film work running through payroll companies may well have, and this series cannot measure that. What it measures is employment in a defined industry over time, not the total number of people who work in film.
These are jobs located in Los Angeles County, not Angelenos who work in film. The census measures the second quantity differently.
Method
BLS State and Area Employment, series SMU06310845051200001, all employees, motion picture and sound recording industries, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale metropolitan division. That division is Los Angeles County exactly. 439 monthly observations, January 1990 to July 2026. The supersector comparison uses the same source, and the ten supersectors reconcile to total nonfarm employment in every one of those 439 months.
Figures are published in thousands to one decimal, so a single month is good to about 50 jobs either way. Differences between two nearby months should not be read as precise job counts. 2026 is a partial year, seven months, and is labeled as such wherever it appears.
The full monthly series, the supersector panel and the extraction code are published with this piece.