This article was written before yesterdays shutdown.
LOS ANGELES — The porn industry’s impact on the overall U.S. economy is being felt after last month’s moratorium on adult productions over an HIV scare apparently attributed to the latest disappointing jobs report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Major financial watchers including Bloomberg and the Washington Post have speculated that a 6 percent decline in people working in the motion picture and recording industries in August can be partly blamed on the temporary shutdown of adult films.
The Washington Post economic policy correspondent, Jim Tankersley, tweeted that the porn blip directly affected the new jobs report that showed 22,000 less jobs in the film business. He further said in his blog that when porn has a problem, it could hurt the overall economy.
“The adult film industry appears to have made a disappointing August jobs report look even worse,” Tankersley said.
He explained that the huge drop in movie jobs was probably enough to change how analysts see the jobs report “from kinda gloomy to really gloomy.”
“It appears that the shutdown fell in the window when the government was collecting its jobs data for the month. The Labor Department collects employer data in the ‘pay period including the 12th (of the month), which may or may not correspond directly to the calendar week.’ Last month, the period that includes the 12th ran through the 24th. That means the shutdown was happening while the government was pulling its numbers together,” the columnist wrote.
Bloomberg said that had those 22,000 people been working — buoyed in part by the porn industry — employment growth in August would have modestly beaten expectations.
