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NEW from me: Over the last four years, America has lost more than 200k jobs in creative fields like publishing, film, TV, or graphic design. It's the worst stretch for arts jobs outside of major recessions. How much is AI to blame? And can the arts' business model survive?🧵

2:49 PM · Sep 27, 2026

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Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈

@JosephPolitano

Sep 27

Perhaps the best evidence for AI-driven arts job loss is that all digital arts industries are losing jobs while most live arts still chug along Sectors like graphic design, streaming, & movie recording have experienced historically unusual job loss since ChatGPT's launch

Hollywood has suffered the most in the AI era—with the movie & TV industry losing more than 100k jobs, nearly one-third of the sector’s total employment, over the last four years. Total employment in video production is approaching the lowest levels in 30 years

Can the arts business model survive AI? Perhaps the best guide is to look at how the arts survived past tech revolutions Take music—internet piracy and then streaming killed the lucrative CD market, but musicians mostly saved their jobs by focusing much more on live concerts

But arts businesses in the AI era might end up looking like the unrecoverable devastation of writing businesses in the internet era Social media caused a total collapse of publishers' business models, leading to an 85% drop in news & book employment that shows no sign of abating

Still, it's extremely difficult to predict how tech will interact with arts businesses Take US novel sales, which had been declining for decades up to 2020. Would anyone have anticipated that short-form video apps like TikTok would reverse this trend and send book sales soaring?

Overall, media has always been a small share of the economy—the effect of AI art will be primarily cultural & social rather than economic Still, current arts displacement is a microcosm of disruption already happening in places like tech, and maybe coming to larger sectors soon

Thanks for making it to the end of the thread! If you want to read more, here’s the full article where I give more detailed data on AI & arts job loss While you’re there, consider subscribing to my newsletter where I write all about econ!

AI and the Fall? of the Creative Class

I'm sorry, but as someone very familiar with this topic, your connecting film job loss in the US to AI is thin and inaccurate. After the streaming wars ended, companies (1) pulled back production significantly and (2) moved overseas in the wake of the the strike and because

Isn't this mostly a function of the "streaming wars" coming to an end? Each platform now feels like they have enough content to retain first time users.. so the amount of content being produced has gone down.

Nobody should be surprised that publishers and studios stay quiet about their AI use

200k jobs lost outside a recession is the number. the harder question is whether the business model that employed them was already broken before AI showed up.

it's sobering to wrap your head around how unprepared our political climate is to figure out what to do about a society where everyone is losing their jobs. we can't even handle a convo about food stamps.

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mere

@jaxgriot

i think this is algorithmic curation driven, rather than AI driven

Great, detailed breakdown but it’s interesting how employment numbers from 2015 and 2025 are simply realigning to pre streaming growth.

I knew about two years ago that AI was going to disrupt my industry. I decided to lock in and learn the tools. Completely changed my life. Went from non technical to technical. This past week seeing the capabilities of Opus 5.5 is concerning for media and graphics. We are in

Can you capture all the creators earning on IG, TikTok, Etsy, Pinterest, and other platforms? Could be much lower FT jobs but similar or even larger total income generated, some likely not reported in formal stats.

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Ani (who is not your typical finance bro)

@anistotle_

Is it AI or is it a massive cost of living crisis and housing and food and everything else?

The kids just don’t care anymore. It’s influencers not AI.

this is honestly amazing tho the fewer artists we have making corporate slop the better art will become. there was no such thing as an "art job" for 99% of history like you were either an artist or you werent and that's how all great art was made

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szspagna

@szspagna

AI is a scapegoat here. The arts were already being massacred by the rampant abuse of outsourcing to cheaper sweatshops in Asia/LatAm/South & Eastern Europe. AI is indeed a theft and layoff machine, but let's not pretend like the entertainment/creative industries in the US were

Film industry was already collapsing pre-pandemic, well before AI, and the jobs being gutted were mostly below-the-line physical jobs that were being outsourced because they just hire local as they jumped to whichever countries gave them the best financial incentives.

We already need universal basic income and artists know this.

The Angine de Poitrine Argument for UBI

From scottsantens.com

VastPlan

@yandt888

Sep 27

Translated from Chinese

Over the past four years, the net reduction in creative jobs in the U.S.—spanning publishing, film and television, graphic design, and similar fields—has exceeded 200,000, marking the worst period outside of major recessions. This window also overlaps with pressures on streaming

The trend line clearly starts before you could possibly attribute this to AI

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Professor X

@rationalhumanis

It's wild how those in the bubble can't see. It's the constant, unending woke-scolding. It's basically impossible to see any movie since 2020 and have it be free of political left messaging. Arts went from entertaining people to preaching to them. People don't love preaching.

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