JuicyStarz research · 27 August 2026

Everyone thinks porn is made in LA. The job listings say otherwise.

Ask anybody where adult film gets made and you get the same answer. Los Angeles. The San Fernando Valley. Southern California, end of story.

We pulled more than 1,000 casting and availability postings off JuicyStarz as of August 2026 and mapped where they actually came from. LA still leads. But 179 different American metros posted work, and the five biggest cities on the list account for under a fifth of it.

These are real listings from real people looking for real work. Here is what they show.

Look who is beating Miami

LA on top. No surprise. Now look further down the list.

Miami is supposed to be the other porn capital, the city people name right after the Valley. Here it lands thirteenth. Detroit beats it. So do Indianapolis, Cleveland and Cincinnati. Four Rust Belt cities nobody associates with adult film are posting more work than the second most famous address in the business.

The top five cities hold 19.9% of everything. The top ten hold 31.5%. Which means roughly two thirds of this market is happening somewhere nobody is looking.

Map of the United States showing the twenty largest metros by share of adult-industry listings. Los Angeles is the largest marker, followed by Atlanta, with the remainder spread across Texas, the Southwest, the Great Lakes region, the mid-Atlantic and Florida. — Bigger dot, more listings. Exact numbers below.

Share of listings by metro, top twenty of 179
#	Metro	Share of listings
1	Los Angeles	6.8%
2	Atlanta	4.4%
3	Dallas	3.2%
4	Phoenix	2.9%
5	Detroit	2.6%
6	Indianapolis	2.6%
7	Houston	2.4%
8	Baltimore	2.2%
9	Chicago	2.2%
10	Cleveland	2.1%
11	New York City	1.9%
12	Cincinnati	1.7%
13	Miami	1.6%
14	Jacksonville	1.5%
15	Oklahoma City	1.4%
16	Philadelphia	1.4%
17	St. Louis	1.4%
18	Charleston	1.1%
19	Ogden	1.1%
20	Birmingham	1.0%

Even the number one city only takes 6.8%. Nothing outside the top two cracks 4%. The other 159 metros split the rest.

Two thirds of it is one kind of scene

Not all scene work is equal either. Two thirds of everything posted, 66.2%, is mixed-gender. Group scenes take 20.1%. Male-male takes 13.7%.

Remember that two thirds. It is about to matter a lot.

Mixed-gender scenes66.2%
Group scenes20.1%
Male-male scenes13.7%

Why men get $100 and women get thousands

Money follows scarcity. It always has. And on this board the two halves of a straight scene are nowhere near equally scarce.

For every woman posting that she is available for mixed-gender work, 1.65 casting calls are hunting for one. For men that number is 1.16. Both sides are short. The female side is short by about 42% more, and it is short right inside the category that makes up two thirds of the market.

That gap is the engine behind the pay gap everybody already knows about. Male performers routinely book scenes for under $100. Female performers can command thousands. Those dollar figures come from the industry, not from our data. What our data shows you is the machinery underneath them.

Orange marks roles where casting calls outnumber availability posts; blue marks the reverse. Scarcity is confined entirely to mixed-gender scene work.

Here is the twist

The same women who are scarce in mixed-gender scenes are oversupplied in group scenes, sitting at 0.65. Men run 1.16 and 0.55 across the same line. Every role that is short is mixed-gender. Every role with people to spare is group work or crew.

So nobody is actually missing. There is no shortage of performers here. Demand piled onto one type of scene, that type is 66.2% of the market, and it happens to be the one fewest people are lining up to do.

A shortage of willingness looks exactly like a shortage of people. It costs exactly the same too.

Casting calls versus availability posts by role
Role	Wanted	Offering	Ratio
Female talent, mixed-gender scenes	56	34	1.65
Male talent, mixed-gender scenes	79	68	1.16
Male talent, male-male scenes	25	24	1.04
Female talent, group scenes	15	23	0.65
Male talent, group scenes	12	22	0.55
Camera and production crew	5	11	0.45

These are the people actively advertising. Performers already booked through agents do not post availability, so the visible supply runs tighter than the real one.

About this data

Every listing published on JuicyStarz through August 2026. Repeat postings of the same listing by the same person count once. Pay figures are industry-reported, not taken from these listings.

Reporters and researchers: take these numbers, just credit JuicyStarz. Want to see what is posted in your city right now? Hit the jobs board. Posting something yourself? Read the rules first.