Los Angeles County has put a price tag on the Paramount Skydance merger with Warner Bros. Discovery: $2.78 billion in economic value, $1.26 billion in wages and $4.06 billion in business output that could vanish if the $111 billion combination closes. The figures come from an August 18 analysis by the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity and CVL Economics, presented to the Board of Supervisors as the public fight over the deal intensifies.
Job losses measured in job-years
The study uses a job-year metric, one position held for twelve months, to capture employment erosion over time. Direct exposure totals 4,500 job-years across corporate, creative and production staff. Indirect exposure, covering vendors such as prop houses, transport firms and caterers, adds 2,661 job-years. Induced jobs, the restaurants and retailers sustained by studio spending, account for another 3,204 job-years. Together they represent a workforce contraction the county argues the region cannot absorb.
Tax base and leverage pressure
The revenue hit would reach $547 million in total taxes, with $78.6 million falling on local coffers. The report highlights a structural problem: combined 2025 net interest expense of $737 million already exceeded operating income of $712 million. Closing the transaction would add more debt, including a ticking fee of roughly $7 million per day that activates if the deal misses an October 1 deadline. The county warns that a highly leveraged entity with consolidated decision-making will have both the incentive and the ability to shift production elsewhere.
Industry already in retreat
The backdrop is an entertainment sector that has yet to recover. Motion picture employment in the county bottomed at 93,263 in 2025, a 36 percent drop from 2022. California has shed 52,016 entertainment jobs since 2022, and more than 99 percent of those losses sit in Los Angeles County. The study frames the merger as an additional risk layer on top of pandemic aftershocks, labor stoppages and a shrinking slate of greenlit projects.
Company response frames decline as rationale
A Paramount Skydance spokesperson said the study validates the merger thesis, arguing the industry is contracting and that the combined company’s commitment to deploy $30 billion annually on production and release thirty or more films per year would rebuild the employment base over time. The county’s analysis treats that projection as a claim, not a commitment, and notes the absence of binding employment guarantees or conditional break-fee protections tied to local hiring.