'Jumanji 3,' which was awarded $44 million for filming in California, hired 538 crew members, the vast majority of whom are local. Hiram Garcia/Sony Pictures Findings from economists about film subsidy programs are almost universally negative: It’s a race to the bottom with negligible economic benefits for the state where the biggest winner is Hollywood.
Consider Oklahoma. In 2023, the state was having its film moment. Major productions had been flocking to the region as it poured more and more money into its rebate program. The subsidies lured Reservation Dogs. Taylor Sheridan’s Tulsa King followed, as did Twisters.
An inflection point came when Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon rolled into town. The production transformed a Northern Oklahoma city to double as 1920s Fairfax, where the killings at the center of the $200 million epic occurred. Carpenters, set decorators and landscapers, among other crew, were hired for the makeover. The thinking for the financial incentives is that the state will see a major boost to its local economy by hosting big-budget movies and TV shows.
But a report published on Wednesday evaluating how effective film subsidies are at creating local employment said that only 30 percent of the $100 million Oklahoma sees in production spend each year goes to in-state workers in the form of wages. The findings issued by workforce training operator Kalison Studios suggest that many of the regions touting sky-high production spending aren’t actually generating as many jobs for their residents as the figures imply.
Some industry hotspots with relatively low local hire rates compared to the amount they give in financial incentives: Ontario (86 percent), New Mexico (82 percent), Australia (82 percent), Georgia (72 percent) and Hungary (68 percent). A few of these film hubs share structural issues related to rapid production growth outpacing local workforce development, film subsidy programs not prioritizing local hiring and senior roles being filled by more experienced workers who live in other regions.
“Georgia is surprisingly low,” says Kalison Studios founder Glenn Kalison. “At the same time, it has greatest opportunity for improvement. And it’s doing the most to address that. So I think that’s in their favor. But there has been a transient class moving out of Georgia and folks flying in from L.A.”
For years, Georgia sold its filming subsidy as an investment in middle-class jobs and marketed itself as “Hollywood of the South.” It was the home of Marvel Studios and other tentpoles, like The Suicide Squad, Creed III and Bad Boys for Life. Around this time, an auditor had estimated that the state only saw a return of 19 cents in tax revenue for every dollar it gave to studios, which collectively got $5.2 billion from 2015 to 2022. Still, Georgia stuck by the program.
But as other regions instituted more attractive film incentives, the state saw fewer and fewer movies and TV shows. In 2025, production spending plummeted to $2.3 billion across 245 production after peaking in 2022 at $4.4 billion across 412 productions. Marvel Studios has left for the U.K., where workers are paid less and studios don’t have to cover the cost of their health insurance. Now, soundstages and other production infrastructure largely sit empty and unused. For studios, the chase for filming subsidies is endless.
On the other end of the spectrum, California leads the pack in the most jobs creation for local residents from productions that shoot in the state. Roughly 98 percent of the $6 billion in annual production spending goes to below-the-line crew, according to the report, which estimates that movies and TV shows generate $1.9 billion per year in crew wages. Notably, many of the department heads who productions based in other states have to fly in are local to the state.
One important consideration: California’s film subsidy program prioritizes in-state spending and below-the-line jobs. Jumanji, which was awarded $44 million for filming in the state, hired 538 crew members, the vast majority of whom are local. It’s expected to spend more than $161 million in wages and payments to local vendors, among other things, across filming.
The report lends credibility to the posture of Gov. Gavin Newsom, lawmakers and industry advocates in L.A. pushing for even higher filming subsidies in California, all of whom say the state should protect a legacy industry. Many have pointed to the fall of Detroit’s automotive industry, which left thousands without jobs. Findings from the state’s legislative analyst last year on the financial incentives are more nuanced than other regions: there’s not much evidence that expanding the tax credit would benefit California’s economy as a whole but that the increase could be worthwhile to maintain the state’s share of production and volume of jobs in the film and TV industry. California accounts for the most film and TV shoots in the U.S., over 2.5 times the size of its next largest competitor.
In 2021, there were more than 141,000 workers in California in the film and TV recording industry who collectively earned $19.2 billion in wages, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those figures plummeted to 121,000 workers who collectively earned $17.5 billion in 2024, the most recent year the data is available. Los Angeles County alone lost more than 15,000 entertainment jobs in that span.
“It is vital to the strength of industry and city to support these incentives,” said Noah Wyle, star and executive producer of The Pitt, at a congressional hearing last month. “It’s an investment in the city’s most precious commodity and asset. it’s an investment in its people.”
Other regions that have high local jobs creation rates include the U.K. (98 percent), New York (95 percent) and British Columbia (93 percent). All have decades of sustained production and the infrastructure to support Hollywood.
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