Hollywood's Faltering Job Market

The Brian Lehrer Show examines the alarming decline of Hollywood's job market, revealing a 30% drop in employment across the U.S. motion picture and TV industry from 2022 to 2025. Ben Fritz of The Wall Street Journal explains that the collapse stems from three interconnected forces: the bursting of the streaming bubble, shifting Wall Street priorities toward profitability over growth, and the rise of global production incentives. Studios are increasingly filming abroad—especially in the UK, Canada, and Hungary—due to lower labor costs and generous tax credits, even as domestic production hubs like Los Angeles face severe job losses. Listeners from New York, New Jersey, and Long Island share firsthand accounts of dwindling work, union members struggling with non-union gigs, and studios like Kauffman Astoria facing foreclosure despite new facilities opening. While New Jersey emerges as a bright spot with the most aggressive state tax incentives, the broader industry faces a paradox: oversupply of soundstages amid a shortage of content. The episode concludes with a call to action for a federal production tax credit to reverse the trend, warning that without intervention, Hollywood’s middle class could vanish and the U.S. could lose its global creative leadership.