Entertainment employment has experienced a sharp decline since a hitting a high in February last year, but a slight (0.8 percent) increase in entertainment jobs in July may signal that the industry is pulling out of its slump. There were 127,600 entertainment-related jobs in Los Angeles County in July, an increase of 2,900 jobs over June and 1,000 jobs over July 1998, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “The industry does seem to have stabilized over the last three months,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the LAEDC. “We’re still waiting to see if the trend of modest recovery holds over the next few months.” Entertainment employment went into a sharp decline following the industry high of 142,500 jobs in February 1998, according to the LAEDC. Kyser said sound-stage occupancy was at 95 percent this July, also a good sign. Most of the filming, though, was for television programs, which provide less of a boost to the economy than feature film projects do. The film industry has blamed runaway production to Canada and other countries for the job losses. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, commissioned by the Directors Guild of America, reported that the United States lost 20,000 entertainment jobs to other areas in 1998. L.A. County’s overall job market was up 1.9 percent in July vs. the year-earlier period, according to the LAEDC. That is slower than the 2.2 percent annualized rate at which the county job market was growing during the first half of 1999. Job cuts in aerospace in the Antelope Valley were partly to blame for the slowdown, Kyser said.