After a slight dip in layoffs in 2024, the entertainment and media industry jobs suffered through another difficult year.
In 2025, over 17,000 jobs were cut across television, film, broadcast, news and streaming in the first 11 months of the year. This figure was up 18% from last year, continuing a trend from the past few years as the industry has wrestled with consolidation and other pressures like the double strikes in 2023.
News alone, including broadcast, digital and print, suffered 2,254 job cuts to date, 179 of which occurred in November, but for the year, cuts were down 50% from the 4,537 job losses announced during the same period last year.
The most cited reason for layoffs was restructuring and industry consolidation, according to Challenger. This summer the FCC officially approved the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media, leading to layoffs across the Paramount entertainment business. Disney laid off hundreds this year, as part of CEO Bob Iger’s 2023 initiative to cut costs amid an audience migration away from cable TV subscriptions to streaming platforms.
A World Economic Forum survey also found that 41% of companies worldwide expect to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence. Generative AI’s ability to handle more more complicated tasks have led to companies cutting jobs, although the actual return on investment of AI tools has been disappointing.
Correspondingly, tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are expected to double by 2030, according to the WEF.
As AI cements itself into everyday life, digital media companies struggle. Sites that relied heavily on SEO and search are having to adapt strategy, leading some to shutter, like Teen Vogue. Layoffs across Condé Nast and Penske-owned properties removed work-from-home employment as an option, instituting in-office mandates and forced resignations as a result. And PBS lost federal funding under President Donald Trump, forcing it to cut 15% of its staff.
These job losses underscore a more broadly weaker job market, with November seeing more than 71,000 layoffs overall, the second highest over the last five years, behind only the 2022 cuts, according to said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Challenger also noted that since the financial crisis in 2008, companies have shifted away from year-end layoff announcements. From 2010 to 2017, the media industry lost 7,305 jobs per year on average, according to Challenger’s data. Since 2018, the average number of annual job cuts has jumped to 14,298.
There is one industry in the entertainment business that is growing, though: the creator economy. As other industries shrink, the digital creator industry has only grown in 2025. From 2022 to 2024, L.A. employment in the motion picture and sound recording industries decreased by 27%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But during that same time period, employment in the creator economy increased by 5%, and companies in the creator space also increased by 5%.
The microdramas business has also grown this year, employing Hollywood production crews, nonunion actors and writers to create bite-sized, bingeable episodes that turn a profit. In just four years since the launch of these vertical dramas, the genre’s market has surpassed $8 billion globally, according to Media Partners Asia.
Below is a look back at a grisly year that is increasingly becoming the norm for the news and entertainment industries.
Entertainment
The entertainment industry suffered thousands of job losses this year as industry consolidation and contraction hit companies like Paramount, NBCUniversal, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery.
The FCC approved the Paramount-Skydance merger in July, placing the company under CEO David Ellison’s hands. During the last quarter of 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery reviewed bids to sell its holdings. It accepted Netflix’s offer, but Paramount has continued to put pressure on the company to accepts its bid. However the bidding war plays out, any deal will result in layoffs, although the timing could stretch into 2027.
As Hollywood continues to lose out on productions to the U.K. due to incentives overseas and the rising cost of shooting in Los Angeles, the industry has also taken a hit.
Some of the major job cuts to hit Hollywood this year included:
- Paramount underwent another round of layoffs under Ellison, impacting 2,000 employees as part of Skydance’s efforts to exceed $2 billion in cost savings. Executives at CBS Entertainment, Paramount+, MTV, BET and more were also hit by Paramount’s layoffs in October.
- Warner Bros. laid off less than 100 people in June, following its announcement to spinoff its cable news offerings into a different company. The layoffs affected the company’s cable TV business, which includes TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, Discovery, TLC, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies.
- As part of Comcast’s Versant cable spinoff, NBCUniversal laid off 150 staffers at NBC News, roughly 7% of the workforce, and employees in the company’s Television Entertainment Group.
- Disney laid off just under 200 employees from ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks in May, a majority of which from ABC News. The company also laid off several hundred employees globally, with the cuts expected to impact a limited number of positions in marketing for both film and television, publicity, casting, development and corporate financial operations.
Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal are each planning to spinoff their cable linear assets next year. With Comcast’s creation of Versant, NBCU laid off 7% of the workforce at NBC News and more employees from the television sector of the business, with Versant trading at the beginning of 2026.
Under the leadership of Gunnar Wiedenfels, Warner Bros. will house its traditional TV networks under the independent “Global Networks” company. This split will go into effect later in 2026 under the accepted Netflix bid.
Paramount is still pursuing the entire Warner Bros. Discovery company, and said it expects to wring out $6 billion in merger-cost savings over the next three years. Analysts predicted at least 6,000 job losses, echoing Disney’s 2019 Fox acquisition downsizing.
On-location production in the greater Los Angeles area, meanwhile, declined 13.2% from July through September compared to the same period last year, according to FilmLA. Only 157 theatrical films, television shows and movies, and streaming projects shot in Los Angeles County were completed and released in 2024. That’s down 14% from the 183 projects recorded in 2023 and the 228 recorded in 2022 amidst the production backlog caused by COVID.
While Hollywood remains the leader in global film and TV production, the gap continues to steadily narrow while an estimated 41,000 entertainment jobs in Los Angeles have been lost over the past five years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“There are far fewer film projects being made in Los Angeles than there were in the recent past,” FilmLA Vice President of Communications Philip Sokoloski said. “Expanded options for attracting and retaining film jobs – as enacted this past July — are not only good for California’s economy, they are a critical form of protection for working families.”
Media
With the impending threat and continued implementation of AI in the newsroom, media companies have made tough decisions to best fit their financial needs and maintain relevancy.
Several news organizations took hits as they pivot to keep up with audiences shortening attention spans and growing content sources.
- Dotdash Meredith, one of the largest media publishers in the United States, is laying off 143 employees, to adapt to the “rapidly changing” media industry and increasing its investments in other projects. After rebranding to People Inc., the company laid off an additional 226 staffers, about 6% of the staff, as its media properties instead invested in new skills.
- Washington Post cut 4% of its workforce, roughly 100 employees, specifically affecting its advertising, marketing and information technology teams.
- Forbes laid off 5% of its employees, citing unmet internal financial goals as the primary reason.
- CNN slashed 200 staffers in January, as the company pivoted towards digital post-election and geared up for the release of a new streaming service.
- PBS laid off 15% of its staff after the loss of $500 million in federal funding for public broadcasters, including PBS and NPR.
- CBS News canceled its streaming companion shows to “CBS Mornings” and “CBS Evening News” as part of newsroom wide layoffs.
- Business Insider laid off 21% of its staff, citing an opportunity for the company to “harness AI first.”
The cuts came amid a broader wave of layoffs throughout 2025. CBS News laid off about 100 people in October, weeks after NBC News laid off roughly 150 people. Condé Nast also cut multiple staffers last month through layoffs at Teen Vogue and the firings of four staffers who protested the cuts.
Penske staffers suffered a wave of cuts at Variety, Rolling Stone and Billboard just weeks before the holidays. The layoffs at PMC organizations also come after the company removed work-from-home employment as an option, instituting in-office mandates and forced resignations in October for those who would not comply.
AI
There was a distinct rise in AI-driven layoffs this year, with the technology accounting for nearly 55,000 job cuts, according to data from Challenger. Since its introduction, AI has offered to replace workers and perform the jobs of many at a lower cost, vastly changing how employers value their employees and how secure workers feel in their roles.
Amazon laid off 14,000 employees in October. CEO Andy Jassy claimed the cuts were not necessarily driven by financial or AI factors though the company’s initial memo to staffers said the company needed to meet “this generation of AI.” Microsoft similarly cut 15,000 jobs throughout the year, providing a variety of explanations for the cuts. Both companies have invested heavily in AI tools.
AI’s integration into the newsroom has not been seamless for all — see the Washington Post’s AI-generated news podcast — but media organizations are leaning into the technology as a tool to keep up and compete.
New York became the first state to require employers to disclose when AI is the reason for layoffs this year as more companies seek the technology out as a way to increase work efficiency and potentially cut entry level roles.
“Currently, AI aids news workers rather than replaces them, but there are no guarantees this will remain the case,” a report from Columbia University’s journalism school said earlier this year. “AI is sufficiently mature to enable the replacement of at least some journalism jobs, either directly or because fewer workers are needed.”
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