The City of Los Angeles is a microcosm of the flight of population away from high-tax blue states:
Tens of thousands of residents are fleeing Los Angeles County, raising fresh questions about the region’s future as economic pressures mount.
The region recorded the largest population drop of any in the nation between July 2024 and July 2025, according to newly released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The data, published March 26, shows roughly 54,000 residents left the county during that one-year period. The losses mark a continuation of a steady slide for the nation’s most populous county.
That is a net number. I was in Southern California in 1960, when it was a magnet that drew people from around the country. It wasn’t just the climate, Los Angeles was a land of economic opportunity.
Today’s exodus is due in part to the decline of Hollywood, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
Hollywood studios are making significantly fewer movies and television shows than they did just a few years ago. The ones they do make are increasingly being shot in other countries and states that offer more generous tax subsidies.
The result: a 30% drop in employment from a late-2022 peak for actors, carpenters, costumers and the hundreds of other professions that make movies and TV shows, according to Labor Department data. In production hubs like Los Angeles, the economic pain that has followed is apparent to everyone…
Subsidies and cheaper production costs elsewhere are part of the story, but there is more than that going on:
the nature of entertainment is changing significantly. Until recently, most of what was available to watch on a screen came from Hollywood. Now people are spending a growing share of their leisure time watching video on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram produced by amateurs or small production companies using nonunion labor.
Sports have become a key driver for streaming subscriptions and linear TV viewership. Escalating costs for NFL and NBA rights mean entertainment companies have less money to make movies and TV shows.
And movies and television programs that are of zero interest to half the population don’t make much money.
Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, could eliminate more production jobs or spark a new production boom if the technology enables content to be made less expensively.
The nightmare scenario is playing out in Los Angeles, where a century-old entertainment economy is evaporating with no signs of a turnaround on the horizon. Many worry Hollywood will soon resemble Detroit after the decline of the auto industry, with corporate headquarters still located here, but little of the actual work.
Could Hollywood soon be like Detroit? Golden geese don’t live forever. Killing California might have seemed an impossible task, given that state’s natural advantages. But we are seeing a decline that won’t be reversed without fundamental changes, both policy and cultural.
