Milken Study Finds Expanded Film Tax Credit Effective at Job Creation

California has recently seen an increase in the number of motion picture industry employees, but the state government could do more to lure movie making back to the Golden State. Those were the conclusions the Milken Institute made in a June 14 study on Hollywood movie and television filming and employment. The Santa Monica think tank’s “Hollywood Update” report was its first motion picture assessment since 2014. The 2014 study came months before state government dramatically increased motion picture tax credits, which are administered by the California Film Commission, from $100 million to $330 million. Study authors Kevin Klowden and Jessica Jackson concluded that the greatly expanded tax credit program, which the state legislature recently voted to extend through 2024, has been generally effective. The study cited federal data on motion picture and video industries employment to show that California has 169,512 industry employees as of 2016, a 16 percent increase from 2012. That’s a higher jump than the U.S. overall, which had an 11 percent spike in the same time period. However, Klowden and Jackson dinged the Film Commission for spending too much money on retaining TV shows and not enough on keeping films. The authors noted that the number of film shooting days jumped at a lower rate than the number of days motion picture producers spent shooting TV.