Democrats ran Detroit into the ground and called it progress right up until the day GM declared bankruptcy.
California is running out of time to avoid the same mistake.
The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell – and the number buried inside it is the one Gavin Newsom has been praying nobody would find.
Hollywood Job Losses Just Hit a Number California Cannot Ignore
California has lost 40,000 film and television production jobs in just two years.
The Wall Street Journal's latest data shows employment in motion picture and video production is down 30% from its late-2022 peak – a drop so steep it dwarfs the damage from the writers' and actors' strikes.
Behind-the-scenes craftspeople – the carpenters, costumers, electricians, and grips who built the middle class on Hollywood paychecks – worked 36% fewer hours in 2024 than they did in 2022.
In Los Angeles, on-location production shoot days fell from 18,560 in 2021 to 10,424 in 2025 for television alone.
Studios aren't just making fewer shows. They're making them somewhere else.
In 2021, the United States led the world with 251 newly started major productions. By 2025, that number had fallen to 159 – while productions outside the U.S. surged well above their 2021 levels.
The UK, Canada, and Australia now collectively offer tax refunds covering nearly half of what a studio spends locally. Hungary is pulling work because the math is humiliating — seven grips for a full 30-day shoot runs $59,000 in Budapest. In Los Angeles, that buys you one.
The California Film Tax Credit That Changed Nothing
Here's what Gavin Newsom did while California lost 40,000 jobs: he doubled the state's film tax credit from $330 million to $750 million.
Industry experts estimate the expanded program will generate 4,000 to 5,000 jobs.
He lost 40,000 so he’s trying to buy back 5,000.
After he signed that deal in July 2025, California still posted a 20% drop in local production during the fourth quarter of that same year. The incentives kicked in and the bleeding accelerated. Los Angeles barely held onto first place for production among U.S. states – with New York nipping at its heels.
Newsom knows it isn't working. He went on television and admitted the business is "on life support." Then he flew to Washington and asked Trump to build a $7.5 billion federal incentive program – for an industry that decades of Democrat governance drove out of California in the first place.
Trump called Newsom a "grossly incompetent governor" who let Hollywood fall apart. He wasn't wrong.
Meanwhile, California's film permit application fee sits at $3,724 – nearly four times what New York charges, nearly ten times what Atlanta charges. Democrats in Sacramento know about this. They've known for years. Their solution has been to load the industry with more regulations while competitors stripped theirs away.
California Film and TV Production Is Collapsing and So Is Everything Else
California's $4.3 trillion economy rests on three pillars: technology, entertainment, and agriculture. Two of those three are in serious trouble at the same time.
Tech employment peaked in mid-2022 and hasn't recovered. AI is gutting lower-level software development, web design, and data analysis positions across Silicon Valley while stock prices soar and workers collect unemployment.
The California Economic Forecast described tech job losses as a "freefall" that was supposed to bottom out by mid-2025 – but the layoffs haven't stopped.
Entertainment is in free-fall too.
Agriculture remains strong – California still grows more than half the country's fruits, vegetables, and nuts. But even that pillar faces pressure from water policy, regulatory burden, and the border enforcement that Socialist Democrats have spent years fighting.
Detroit didn't collapse all at once. The auto industry started cracking in the 1970s when Japanese competitors offered what American manufacturers refused to. Labor costs climbed while quality slipped.
Politicians in Michigan told themselves the good times would come back. By the time General Motors and Chrysler declared bankruptcy in 2009, the city had been bleeding for 40 years.
Today, thousands of Detroit houses sit abandoned. Its population has fallen by more than a million people. Once-great factories serve as sets for post-apocalyptic films.
Industry insiders are no longer whispering about the Detroit comparison. At a 2025 town hall in Los Angeles, a "Stay in LA" campaign member stood up and told the room: "This is not hyperbole to say that if we don't act, the California film and TV industry will become the next Detroit auto."
The Wall Street Journal used those same words Sunday – in a straight news report.
Democrats Built This and They're Blaming Everyone Else
Gavin Newsom's instinct when Trump called him out was to fire back that the president had "no authority" to tariff foreign films.
That's his move. That's always his move.
California's share of national film employment dropped from 54% in 2010 to 46% in 2023 – and Newsom never said a word. The state capped its incentive program at $330 million for over a decade while Georgia handed out unlimited credits and grabbed the industry's crown. Los Angeles charges nearly ten times more for a film permit than Atlanta.
The Socialist Democrats who run California have had every tool to fix this. They held a supermajority in the legislature. They had a governor who fancies himself a national brand. They had a $4.3 trillion economy and decades of goodwill from the industry that made America's culture the envy of the world.
They chose high taxes, punishing regulations, and the comfortable assumption that Hollywood would never actually leave.
Hollywood left.
California cannot fully recover what it lost – too many productions are locked into long-term deals in Georgia, London, and Budapest. The real question is whether Sacramento's Socialist Democrats will keep telling themselves the problem is fixable with another tax credit – while the carpenters, costumers, and grips who built the middle class on California paychecks learn what workers in Detroit figured out a generation ago.
The headquarters stay. The jobs go somewhere else.
Sources:
- Nate Rattner and Ben Fritz, "See How Hollywood's Job Market Is Collapsing," The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2026.
- John Nolte, "Newsom Fail – Film and TV Production Drops 20% in Democrat-Run California," Breitbart, January 20, 2026.
- Warner Todd Huston, "Gavin Newsom Fail: Movies and TV Productions Rapidly Fleeing California to Film Outside USA," Breitbart, April 20, 2025.
- "California Is Doubling Its Film Incentive, but It May Be Too Late to Stop Runaway Production," Variety, May 28, 2025.
- "Hollywood At Risk of Becoming the 'Next Detroit Auto,'" The Hollywood Reporter, April 17, 2025.
- "Gavin Newsom's Plan To Save Hollywood," Newsweek, July 1, 2025.
