OCTOBER 2025 – Entertainment reporter Ben Fritz of The Wall Street Journal describes some real-life experiences of longtime gig workers in LA’s once-vast entertainment industry. It’s an important story, and a depressing one, too. After decades as production pros and animators and assistant directors, entertainment industry workers can’t find work in LA anymore. Many are resorting to crummy out-of-industry hourly jobs to make ends meet. The article is a classic reporting formula of small, personal stories adding up to a relevant Big Picture.
Fritz mentions – but doesn’t go on about – state tax disincentives and union regulations that have long contributed to the declining amount of production work in LA. More and more productions, for years, have been migrating not simply to places like Georgia and Vancouver, but overseas as well. The pandemic, a painful strike, and the coming impact of AI have contributed to the fall-off.
Fritz mentions too a development that suggests those jobs may never come back:
Hollywood has endured downturns before, but rarely this sudden and severe. Some industry analysts believe consumers might be pivoting permanently from professionally made content to the endless buffet of YouTube and social media.
The article triggered nearly 1800 reader comments – a number well above average for a news feature. The most popular comment suggested woke cultural forces were at work:
The issue is the content. Pre-Covid things had gotten somewhat political and preachy, but there were still a lot of great shows and tent-pole movies. Post 2020 everything might as well be a mandatory, unconscious bias training course at your job. Comedies can’t be edgy or funny because everything is hyper sensitive. If there is a love story it dang well better not be hetero-normative or between people of the same race. Dramas have to heavily focus on marginalized communities. Making a historical piece? Better make sure you figure out how to get that diversity score up! Storytelling literally became the least important aspect of television and filmmaking.
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/los-angeles-entertainment-economy-downturn-7879105c