LA County Report Warns Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Could Cost Nearly 4,500 Hollywood Jobs

Los Angeles has spent the past several years watching its once-dominant production industry steadily shrink, as tax incentives in other states and countries continue to pull film and television work away from the region. That erosion has already been dramatic, with the county losing more than 52,000 film and television jobs since 2022, and nearly all of those losses concentrated within Los Angeles County itself.

Now, a new economic analysis suggests that decline could accelerate significantly if a major industry merger moves forward as planned. The Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger, valued at roughly $110 billion, has been working its way through regulatory review, and Los Angeles County commissioned an independent study to understand what consolidation between the two media giants could mean for the local workforce.

That final report, released by the Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity and the county’s Film Office, found that the merger could put approximately 4,500 direct film and television jobs at risk in the county over the three-year period during which the companies combine operations. The analysis, conducted by CVL Economics, also estimated a total of 10,360 job-years could be exposed, a figure that includes both direct production employment and jobs supported indirectly by that spending.

Beyond the direct job losses, the report broke down additional layers of economic exposure tied to the merger. It identified 2,661 indirect jobs at small businesses that support production work, including prop houses, printers, and transportation companies, along with 3,204 induced jobs tied to spending by film and TV workers at local restaurants, retailers, and service providers. In total, the report estimated the potential impact at $1.26 billion in lost wages, $4.06 billion in business output, and $547 million in tax revenue.

County officials were quick to frame these figures as modeled risk projections rather than confirmed layoff announcements, since neither Paramount nor Warner Bros. Discovery has publicly announced cuts on the scale described in the analysis. Still, the report identifies five specific mechanisms through which merger-driven consolidation could translate into real job losses, including slate consolidation as the newly combined company greenlights fewer overall projects, shared below-the-line workforce vulnerability, and location decisions that could shift productions away from California entirely.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath didn’t mince words in response to the findings. “This report confirms what we feared: 4,500 direct film and television jobs, more than 10,000 total job-years, and $4.06 billion in business output are at risk,” she said, adding, “Los Angeles has already lost too many jobs, too much production, and too many people who make this industry possible. We cannot afford to lose another generation of Hollywood workers,” as stated in a release from Los Angeles County.

The report also highlighted a striking data point about where Paramount-WBD’s combined slate is currently being filmed. Of the 73 films on the companies’ combined 2025 production schedule with an identified filming location, only four were shot anywhere in California, and just one of those within Los Angeles County itself.

That geographic imbalance underscores broader concerns raised throughout the report about cost-of-living pressures and competitive tax credit structures in other states and countries, which have steadily pulled production work away from Southern California even before this merger entered the picture. CVL Economics co-founder Adam Fowler noted that the broader media industry is undergoing “a period of profound structural realignment,” pointing to declining linear television revenue as just one of several pressures reshaping the landscape.

With regulatory review of the merger still ongoing and a legal challenge from California’s attorney general reportedly still active, the timeline for when, or whether, these projected job losses could materialize remains uncertain. For a local economy still trying to recover from years of production decline, this latest report adds fresh urgency to an already precarious moment for the industry that built Los Angeles’ identity.

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