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Film accounts for most of the 189,000 creative jobs lost since 2022
Fortune's review of BLS data counts 189,000 creative jobs lost since 2022, 120,000 of them in film and sound recording after a 27% fall. Los Angeles shoot days fell faster than film jobs, a pattern that fits a production slump better than AI replacing crews.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Broadcasting and content providers, including streaming, lost about 29,000 jobs between 2022 and 2025, while newspaper, magazine and book publishers shed about 40,000.
- Film and TV production employment peaked at 289,100 in October 2022 and has since fallen by more than a third, according to the BLS.
- Performing arts and spectator sports, which depend on people gathering in one place, added about 67,000 jobs over the same four years.
- Economics writer Joseph Politano puts the four-year creative job loss above 200,000, a stretch he says was matched only in the 2001 and 2008 recessions.
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Why it matters
- contradiction How big the loss is depends on whose count is used: Politano's figure of more than 200,000 sits above Fortune's 189,000, and Florida doubts the higher one, so the comparison with 2001 and 2008 rests on the less settled number.
- constraint With the 2023 strikes and production leaving Los Angeles both inside the film figures, the largest block of the 189,000 cannot be read as clean evidence that AI replaced workers.
- exposure Publishing and broadcasting workers are the group whose losses AI can most plausibly explain, because their 69,000 lost jobs come without the strike that muddies the film count.
- cost After netting out live events, creative employment is down about 122,000 jobs, with the gains going to places that have venues and the losses falling on production centres such as Los Angeles.
A 27% fall that comes to 120,000 jobs implies film and sound recording started the window near 444,000 and ended it near 324,000 [3]. The BLS reading for June fits that: 322,300 jobs, the lowest since 1995 outside the pandemic [5]. The three sector losses also add exactly to the total, 120,000 plus 29,000 plus 40,000 [1].
Film and sound recording accounts for about 63% of the 189,000 [2], and most of its loss sits in film and TV production. A fall of more than a third from that line's October 2022 peak comes to more than 96,000 jobs. That is roughly four-fifths of the sector's decline, though the production peak and the sector window start two months apart [4].
Suppose AI were letting producers make the same volume of work with fewer people. Filming would then hold steady while headcount fell. Los Angeles shows the reverse: shoot days there dropped from 36,792 in 2022 to 19,694 in 2025 [6], a 46.5% decline [5], against 27% for film and sound recording employment nationally [2]. About 41,000 film and TV workers left the industry between 2022 and 2024, and the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes drove part of that, Fortune reported [7]. One city's shoot days will overstate a national drop if some of the filming moved elsewhere. In Florida's account, Los Angeles is losing one of the world's great industry clusters as production scatters [12].
Joseph Politano's argument rests on timing. He notes there is no broad recession this time and that the losses coincide with AI tools able to produce novels, images and music at very low cost. He asks whether this is "the fall of the creative class" [10]. Richard Florida coined that phrase in his 2002 book [14], and he disputes both the count and the conclusion. "I'm not sure his numbers are right," Florida told Fortune. "But I don't think it's going to eliminate those jobs. I think it's going to make certain kinds of creative work more valuable." [11]
The film figures could be read two ways. If filming recovers and production jobs come back with it, the decline was lost volume, with the strikes and relocation folded in. If filming recovers and headcount stays near June's low, AI substitution has its best evidence yet, and my view of film is wrong. I think the film figures mostly record less production being made, or rather less production being made in Los Angeles. The cleaner test of AI substitution is the 69,000 jobs publishers and broadcasters shed between 2022 and 2025 [7], about 36% of the total [8]. Fortune ties the strikes only to film and TV [7]. Politano's counter-case still stands: a loss this size without a recession needs a cause, and Fortune says the strikes explain only part of the film decline [7].
Some of the loss has come back in work that needs a live audience. The 67,000 jobs added in performing arts and spectator sports cover about 35% of the 189,000, leaving a net loss near 122,000 [6]. The publishing and broadcasting figures stop at 2025, so that net mixes time windows. Florida ties the gain to cities. "That's why you're seeing cities like New York and San Francisco become more important, not less," he said [13].
What to watch
- A reconciliation of Politano's count of more than 200,000 with Fortune's 189,000, because the gap decides whether this stretch really matches the 2001 and 2008 recessions.
- Publishing and broadcasting payroll figures for 2026, extending the 69,000-job series past the 2025 endpoint Fortune used.
- Whether performing arts and spectator sports keep adding jobs at the pace of the past four years, the main evidence for Florida's case that in-person work gains.