The growing digital media industry is the creator of almost to 207,000 jobs in Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to a new report.
The report from the Center for a Competitive Workforce — in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation — found that employment at companies with a digital media presence like HBO, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Riot Games is also projected to grow, and forecasts an average of 4,000 new well-paying job openings per year over the next five years in middle-skill positions.
“The digital media industry, unlike its motion picture and sound recording predecessors, is a highly mobile industry, with few physical or geographical anchors requiring it to be in any one location over another,” the economic development corporation said. “CCW and its partners believe this requires stakeholders in the region to create an environment that is conducive to this digital media industry’s further growth and success in the LA Basin, to ensure job creation that will fuel economic opportunity for our region’s residents.”
The report said it is the first to define the rapidly growing “digital media” industry and its occupations in the Los Angeles region, and analyzed its overlap with the traditional entertainment industry.
The digital media and entertainment industries employed 306,550 payroll workers in the Los Angeles Basin in 2016, the report found, accounting for 5.2 percent of total regional employment, and between the two industries, 121,180 workers were employed in “overlap” industries which span the digital media and entertainment industry definitions.
The report also found that payroll employment in the digital media industry rose by 11.6 percent from 2006 to 2016, adding over 30,000 jobs, and that real wages in industries identified as having a “transformative digital media presence” grew overall by 14.2 percent, more than three times the growth of all industries in the Los Angeles Basin.
