--- title: America Has Lost 200k of Jobs in Media, Film and the... description: US creative industries have lost more than 200,000 jobs over the last four years, with about 50,000 lost in the past year alone. That's one of the worst media... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/america-has-lost-200k-of-jobs-in-media-film-and-the-arts-how-much-is-ai--atirjqule twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: America Has Lost 200k of Jobs in Media, Film and the Arts. How Much Is AI? | daily.dev og:description: US creative industries have lost more than 200,000 jobs over the last four years, with about 50,000 lost in the past year alone. That's one of the worst media... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/america-has-lost-200k-of-jobs-in-media-film-and-the-arts-how-much-is-ai--atirjqule og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ATiRjqule.png og:image:alt: America Has Lost 200k of Jobs in Media, Film and the Arts. How Much Is AI? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # America Has Lost 200k of Jobs in Media, Film and the Arts. How Much Is AI? **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 12 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary US creative industries have lost more than 200,000 jobs over the last four years, with about 50,000 lost in the past year alone. That's one of the worst media employment stretches in modern history, rivaling only the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Movie and TV jobs fell by over 100,000, nearly a third of the sector, while written publishing lost more than 70,000. About 32% of arts and entertainment workers use generative AI, below the 62% average across all industries. The piece also notes tech has shed jobs every year since 2022, after gaining nearly 300,000 in that year alone. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How many jobs has the US creative industry lost due to AI and other disruptions in recent years US creative industries lost more than 200,000 jobs over a four-year period, with about 50,000 lost in the most recent year alone. This is one of the worst media employment stretches in modern US history, with job loss intensity comparable only to the 2001 and 2008 recessions. The movie and TV sector alone lost over 100,000 jobs, nearly a third of its total employment. _Developers tracking how AI reshapes entire industries can follow labor market signals like these on daily.dev._ ### What percentage of arts and entertainment workers use generative AI tools Roughly 32% of workers in the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector use generative AI to some extent. That is below the 62% average usage rate across all industries, suggesting AI adoption in creative fields lags behind other sectors even as it disrupts employment there. _Anyone weighing AI adoption against industry-wide benchmarks can track usage trends like this on daily.dev._ ### Why doesn't Anthropic build image, video, or music generation models like other AI labs Anthropic has largely avoided image, video, and music generation because the prospective economic benefits are marginal compared to using AI for math or scientific problems. OpenAI similarly abandoned its Sora video generation platform, deciding its limited compute was better spent elsewhere than on making synthetic videos. _Developers evaluating AI labs' strategic priorities can follow these product and compute trade-offs on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 139 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-25). **TL;DR:** Discussion is split on how much of the 200k job losses is due to AI versus other forces like offshoring to cheaper film markets, streaming/attention-economy dynamics, oversaturation of content, and post-COVID shifts in consumption; many argue AI is being used as a convenient excuse for layoffs driven by consolidation and cost-cutting. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 55% mixed · 35% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue AI could eventually enable individual creators to produce more and richer content, pointing to Japan's manga-to-anime pipeline as a model. - A few note economists find AI's measurable economic impact so far minimal, suggesting layoffs are often misattributed to AI. **The pushback** - Many commenters point to offshoring of film production to Europe and cheaper locations as a bigger driver of job losses than AI. - Oversaturation of content and the attention economy (TikTok, YouTube, streaming) are blamed for displacing traditional film/TV/media jobs. - Some see AI efficiency gains as primarily benefiting already-wealthy owners rather than workers or consumers. - Concerns raised that streaming services incentivize churning out high quantities of low-quality content rather than quality productions. - Disagreement over whether real wages and disposable income have actually risen, with several disputing the inflation-adjusted wage data cited. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Commenters debate whether AI, offshoring, COVID aftermath, or attention-economy shifts are the real cause of job losses, with a long tangential argument about wage/inflation data. **Hottest debate:** Whether media job losses are mainly driven by AI, or by offshoring/streaming economics/changing consumption habits, with a sprawling side-debate over whether real wages have actually risen for workers. **Open questions** - Is AI actually driving the layoffs, or is it a convenient excuse for cost-cutting decisions already in motion? - How much of the job loss is due to offshoring of production to cheaper countries versus technology substitution? - Will AI tools eventually enable more creative output and better content, or just more 'slop'? **Highlights** > I live in Atlanta ("y'allywood"), a formerly big LA film outsourcing location. My hobby is film and I know tons of people in the industry. All the jobs have gone to Europe. It's simply cheaper to film there now. Amazon and Netflix built infrastructure and taught local crews how during the pandemic content wars. Looking at my Gen Z wife, all the eyeballs have gone to TikTok. There's the answer. > — [echelon on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227384) > There is infinite demand for content (to the limit that human attention can absorb it). Most content sucks ass. What may appear to be bountiful content is actually a lot of okay and meh content. Very little of it fits to your actual taste preference. It's a whole lot of mediocre. We as humans do not know what plentiful content looks like. We've never lived in it. Most movies suck. You doomscroll and are dissatisfied. You refresh your media recommendations and sigh. You are excited to see a new fantasy or sci-fi film that scratches that itch, yet often left disappointed. We are still in a desert. Anyone who says otherwise is settling for the status quo that our childen will call primitive and beastly. Jobs are disappearing because cheap/free ad subsidized content attracts more eyeball hours than produced and prestige content. It's the optimal pareto frontier of content and does the most bang for buck, most in aggregate eyeball hours. When the tools enable more creation at scale by tasteful creators, we'll start to get closer to content abundance. We're not there yet. > — [echelon on hackernews · 5 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227052) > Why? AI is taking jobs. getty images just filed bankruptcy, stackoverflow went from heavy use to almost no use. AI is taking jobs, tipping toeing around it isn't the best thing. It needs to be said, and then what next needs to be figured out because first we talk about 200k jobs, then we will next talk about 2 million and then 20million > — [segmondy on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227245) > Before AI showed up the UN released a report on the Attention Economy. It said Supply of content had vastly outstripped Demand. It decoupled because entertainment/media was being used to push other products. The telcos, amazon, google/fb and many others were all subsidizing content to push some other product. Exploding info chasing finite non growing eyeballs and time. > — [sjdh76 on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50226952) > > record job loss after the covid bump which we all know resulted in massive hiring sprees in a lot of sectors followed by massive layoffs. Is the movie and movie production sector really experiencing an apocalyptic downturn where the line will reach zero, or just returning to its median? The SAG-WGA strike, the COVID lockdowns shutting down theaters, and the aggressive film production (UK, Poland, Ireland, Norway, Italy) and VFX (Ireland, India) subsidizes right as American states like California, Georgia, NY, and others began cutting them meant much of the American film and television industry got obliterated earlier this decade. > — [alephnerd on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227036) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50226419) · 149 points · 137 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49866839) · 2 points · 2 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Don’t blame AI yet for poor jobs numbers, analysts say](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-blame-ai-yet-for-poor-jobs-numbers-analysts-say-dptnvld4x) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [US Is Starting to See Heavy Job Losses in Roles Exposed to AI](https://daily.dev/posts/us-is-starting-to-see-heavy-job-losses-in-roles-exposed-to-ai-hr0cmsru4) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI is cutting older workers' careers short, study finds](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-is-cutting-older-workers-careers-short-study-finds-sigvjnxq7) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The AI layoff wave is becoming a powder keg](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ai-layoff-wave-is-becoming-a-powder-keg-hjywzunxa) · TechCrunch · 111 upvotes · 15 comments --- Tags: [#genai](https://daily.dev/tags/genai) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/america-has-lost-200k-of-jobs-in-media-film-and-the-arts-how-much-is-ai--atirjqule) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"America Has Lost 200k of Jobs in Media, Film and the Arts. 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