The end of the Hollywood strikes caused employment in the sector to surge in November, but while the business is back, new data shows that there are still more than 25,000 fewer people employed than there were a year ago, suggesting that a return to normal could take longer than people think.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its November jobs report Friday, showing that the motion picture and sound recording industries added 17,000 jobs in the month (“mostly reflecting the resolution of labor disputes in the industry,” per the BLS), and totaled 462,600 people in the month. That is up substantially from September, when both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA were on strike, when the sector employed 431,500 people.
However, the sector is still below where it was a year ago in November 2022, when it employed 487,700 people. The BLS reported peak losses in the motion picture industry at around 50,000 people, before it began to rebound following the resolution of the WGA strike at the end of September.
The information sector as a whole, which also includes publishing, broadcasting, telecom and computer infrastructure providers among other fields, has declined by more than 104,000 from a year ago, the BLS.
The new data indicates that while Hollywood is getting back to work, the logjam of productions and the still-evolving entertainment landscape (there have been continued layoffs at many media and entertainment companies in the last couple of months), it may take longer than anticipated to get employment back to where it was pre-strikes, if it is able to get back to that level at all.
One side effect of the strikes and the ongoing pullback from entertainment companies is likely to be fewer TV shows and movies being produced, which could keep employment lower than where it had previously been.
The end of Peak TV could mean the end of Peak TV employment, in other words.
Still, the overall jobs report for the U.S. was strong, adding 199,000 jobs and seeing the unemployment rate decline to 3.7 percent.
