St. Louis Beats Hollywood: Where Film Workers Actually Earn the Most

July 27, 2026

Film careers are often tied to major production hubs such as Los Angeles and New York, where industry wages can appear especially strong. But for workers weighing where to build a career, pay is only one part of the equation. Local cost of living can significantly change the real value of a film industry paycheck, making some states more financially practical for workers than salary figures alone may suggest. 

To find where film workers’ pay goes furthest, Giggster analyzed the 30 largest U.S. metro areas using 2025 wage data for selected film-related occupations, then adjusted those wages for local cost of living. The analysis shows where film industry pay has the strongest real-world value, which major job markets continue to anchor the industry, and how wage and employment trends have shifted across key production metros in recent years. 

View the full methodology and breakdown here.

Table of Contents

• St. Louis Tops the Real Pay Rankings—Not Los Angeles
• The Hollywood Paradox: Where the Jobs Are vs. Where the Money Goes
• Fastest-Growing Film Markets: Austin Leads With 45% Wage Growth
• Post-2023 Shifts: Which Cities Are Rebounding

Key Takeaways

• Cost of living changes the film-pay ranking. St. Louis ranks No. 1 for real pay, even though it is only No. 21 for nominal wages. New York does the opposite, falling from No. 3 in nominal pay to No. 30 in real pay after local living costs are considered.

• The gap between the highest- and lowest-ranking metros is significant. After adjusting for cost of living, annual film-related wages are worth about $94,800 in St. Louis, compared with roughly $51,200 in New York, showing how far local expenses can reshape the real value of industry pay.

• Los Angeles and New York lead in film jobs, but not in real pay. Despite 75.3K jobs in the Los Angeles metro area and 52.7K in the New York metro area, they rank No. 13 and No. 30 after cost-of-living adjustment.

• Austin saw the fastest film-wage growth from 2020 to 2025, rising 45.4%, while Portland and Chicago posted the strongest post-2023 job gains at 29% and 25%.

The Real Winner: Cost-of-Living Adjustment Flips the Film-Pay Ranking

What the data says:

• St. Louis metro area ranks first with an average annual film salary of $83,600, worth about $94,800 after adjusting for the metro area’s lower cost of living. 

• San Francisco and Los Angeles metro areas have the highest nominal wages, yet fall to No. 12 and No. 13 for real pay, while New York drops from No. 3 in nominal wages to last place at No. 30.

• The gap between the top and bottom metros is large. Adjusted annual wages range from about $94,800 in St. Louis to $51,200 in New York, a difference of roughly $43,600.

LA and NYC: Leading in Jobs, Trailing in Actual Earning Power

What the data says:

• Los Angeles reports 75.3K film-related jobs, and New York reports 52.7K, far more than any other metro. But after adjusting for cost of living, Los Angeles ranks only No. 13 for real pay, while New York falls to No. 30.

• Among major film-related metro areas, Orlando has 8.5K reported film-related jobs, a Very High concentration level, and ranks No. 5 for real pay. Atlanta has 7.3K jobs, an above-average concentration level, and ranks No. 4 for real pay.

• The Dallas metro area also stands out as a strong value market. It has 5.2K reported film-related jobs and ranks No. 10 for real pay, though its concentration of film jobs is lower than the national average.

Austin's Boom: 45% Wage Growth Outpaces Every Other Major Market

What the data says:

• The Austin metro area had the fastest film-wage growth from 2020 to 2025, with average hourly pay rising from $29.77 to $43.28, an increase of $13.50 per hour.

• The gap between the fastest- and slowest-growing metros is wide. Austin’s film-related hourly wages grew by 45.4%, while Charlotte’s increased by just 1%, rising only $0.40 per hour over five years.

• Miami, San Diego, Boston, Riverside, and Seattle all rank among the fastest-growing wage markets, but each still lands outside the top 20 for 2025 cost-of-living-adjusted real pay. 

The 2023 Inflection Point: Which Cities Lost Jobs, Which Are Recovering

What the data says:

• Reported film-related employment fell 18% in Chicago, from about 6.9K to 5.7K jobs, and 17% in Austin, from 3.4K to 2.8K.

• Los Angeles had a smaller percentage drop at 10%, but the largest job-count decline, falling from 74.0K to 66.5K, a loss of about 7.5K jobs.

• Portland, Chicago, Phoenix, Sacramento, and Las Vegas posted the strongest employment gains from 2023 to 2025, with growth ranging from 10% to 29%. 

Key Terms

Methodology

This report evaluates where film-related workers’ pay goes furthest across the 30 largest U.S. metro areas. The analysis focuses on metropolitan statistical areas, not individual city limits, and compares film-related wages, local cost of living, reported employment, wage growth, and employment changes over time.

The 2025 ranking is the primary layer of the report. Historical data from 2020 through 2025 is used as supporting context for wage-growth and employment-change trends.

Film-Related Occupation Basket

This report uses a fixed basket of six film-related occupations from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program.

Data was retrieved from BLS OEWS 2025 metro-level occupation data, with historical comparisons drawn from BLS OEWS data from 2020 through 2024.

The six core occupations included in the wage basket are:

• Producers and Directors

• Film and Video Editors

• Camera Operators, Television, Video, and Film

• Special Effects Artists and Animators

• Art Directors

• Sound Engineering Technicians

For each metro area, the nominal wage estimate is the simple average of annual mean wages across the core occupations reported by the BLS for that metro. If BLS did not report all six occupations in a metro, the estimate was calculated using the available reported occupations and flagged in the tables.

BLS OEWS data is occupation-based, not industry-only payroll data. This means the figures capture workers in film-related occupations across all industries, not only workers employed directly by film studios or production companies.

Cost-of-Living-Adjusted Film Pay

This category measures how far film-related wages go after accounting for local living costs.

Nominal annual wage data was retrieved from BLS OEWS 2025. Cost-of-living data was retrieved from the C2ER Cost of Living Index, Q1 2025.

The Cost of Living Index uses 100 as the U.S. average. Values below 100 indicate lower-than-average living costs, while values above 100 indicate higher-than-average living costs.

Adjusted Annual Wage was calculated as: Adjusted Annual Wage = Nominal Annual Wage ÷ (Cost-of-Living Index ÷ 100)

Metro areas were ranked from highest to lowest based on Adjusted Annual Wage. This is the main ranking metric in the report.

The table also includes Nominal-Pay Rank, which ranks metros by unadjusted annual wage before applying the cost-of-living adjustment. Comparing Nominal-Pay Rank with Real-Pay Rank shows how much a metro moves up or down once local living costs are considered.

Cost of Living vs. U.S. Average

To make the Cost of Living Index easier to read, the article presents it as a percentage above or below the U.S. average.

Cost of Living vs. U.S. Average = Cost-of-Living Index − 100

For example:

• A cost-of-living index of 88.2 is shown as 11.8% below average.

• A cost-of-living index of 145.1 is shown as 45.1% above average.

• A cost-of-living index of 232.6 is shown as 132.6% above average.

Adjusted Annual Wage was calculated using the original cost-of-living index values, not the simplified percentage labels displayed in the table.

Film Job Market Depth

This category measures where film-related jobs are most concentrated and where reported film-related employment is largest.

Data was retrieved from the BLS OEWS 2025 metro-level occupation data. The table uses reported employment, jobs per 1,000 local jobs, and location quotient for the selected film-related occupations used in the labor-market context.

Reported Film-Related Jobs refers to BLS-reported employment across selected film-related occupations. It does not represent total film-industry payroll employment or a count of every individual film worker in the metro area.

Film-Related Jobs per 1,000 Local Jobs shows how common the selected film-related occupations are within the local job market.

Location Quotient is used to measure job concentration. A location quotient of 1.0 represents the national average. Values above 1.0 indicate that film-related jobs are more concentrated locally than they are nationally, while values below 1.0 indicate lower concentration.

For reader clarity, location quotients were converted into Film-Job Concentration Levels:

Very High: 3.00 and above
High: 2.00–2.99
Above Average: 1.25–1.99
Near National Average: 0.75–1.24
Low: below 0.75

These concentration levels are interpretive categories created for this report and do not represent official BLS classifications.

Film-Related Wage Growth, 2020–2025

This category measures how average film-related hourly wages changed within each metro area from 2020 to 2025.

Data was retrieved from BLS OEWS metro-level occupation data for 2020 and 2025. The same six core film-related occupations were used, restricted to occupations reported in both the starting year and 2025, so the occupation mix remained consistent within each metro.

Hourly Wage Growth was calculated as:
Hourly Wage Growth = (Average Hourly Wage in 2025 − Average Hourly Wage in 2020) ÷ Average Hourly Wage in 2020 × 100

The 5-Year Hourly Wage Increase was calculated as:

5-Year Hourly Wage Increase = Average Hourly Wage in 2025 − Average Hourly Wage in 2020

Rankings in this section are based on percentage wage growth, not the dollar increase. The wage-growth figures are nominal and are not adjusted for the cost of living. They are included as historical trend context and should be read separately from the 2025 cost-of-living-adjusted real-pay ranking.

Historical Basket Coverage shows how many of the six core occupations had reported data in both 2020 and 2025.

Film-Related Employment Change Around 2023

This category measures reported employment changes across selected film-related occupations before and after 2023.

Data was retrieved from BLS OEWS metro-level occupation data for May 2022, May 2023, and May 2025.

Employment Change was calculated as:

Employment Change = (Reported Employment in Later Year − Reported Employment in Earlier Year) ÷ Reported Employment in Earlier Year × 100

The report compares two periods:

• May 2022 to May 2023

• May 2023 to May 2025

The first period is described as a pre-2023 contraction. The second period is described as the post-2023 employment change. These figures provide timing context only and should not be read as proof that the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes caused the reported changes.

The May 2022–May 2023 period covers one year, while May 2023–May 2025 covers two years, so the percentages should not be interpreted as directly comparable annual growth rates.

Basket Coverage and Data Suppression

BLS does not report every occupation in every metro area. Missing occupation data was left blank and was not treated as zero.

For the 2025 wage ranking, Basket Coverage shows how many of the six core occupations had reported wage data in each metro. Metros with fewer than six reported occupations were flagged (‡) in the tables.

For the historical wage-growth and employment-change sections, the analysis used matched occupation baskets within each metro. This means the comparison only uses occupations with reported data in both the start year and the end year.

Riverside and Sacramento should be interpreted carefully in the historical sections because their matched historical baskets are smaller than the full six-occupation set.

Cost-of-Living Proxies

Most metro areas used a directly reported C2ER Cost of Living Index value.

Charlotte is represented in the C2ER survey by Salisbury, NC, the official participant assigned to the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia metro area.

Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario was not separately listed in the Q1 2025 C2ER table, so its cost-of-living value was estimated using a California metro-area proxy based on participating California metros in the COLI table.

Ranking Convention

Rankings are category-specific.
Real-Pay Rank is based on the cost-of-living-adjusted annual wage.
Nominal-Pay Rank is based on the unadjusted annual wage.
Employment Rank is based on reported film-related employment.
Wage-growth rankings are based on percentage growth in nominal hourly wages.
Employment-change rankings are based on the percentage change in reported employment for the stated period.

Dollar values are rounded for display. Rankings are based on unrounded values, so rounded values may appear identical even when ranks differ.

The analysis is based on metro areas, not city limits. For example, “Los Angeles” refers to the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area, not only the city of Los Angeles.

Things to Keep in Mind

This report uses occupation-based wage and employment estimates as a proxy for film-career earnings. It does not measure film-industry-only payroll employment.

Adjusted Annual Wage represents estimated purchasing power, not take-home pay. It does not account for taxes, benefits, union dues, freelance status, hours worked, or project availability.

The 2025 real-pay ranking is the primary ranking in this report. Historical wage-growth and employment-change data are included as supporting context only.

Cost-of-living-adjusted pay and wage growth answer different questions. A metro can have strong five-year wage growth but still rank lower for real pay in 2025 if local living costs are high.

Employment-change figures around 2023 are a timing-based context. They should not be interpreted as causal evidence of the impact of the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.