With movie theaters closed and entertainment production efforts stalled across the country, it perhaps comes as little surprise that the motion picture and sound recording industries were hit hard by job losses in April.

According to preliminary data on employment figures for the month of April from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 216,500 Americans lost jobs in the motion picture and sound recording subsector in April, representing a 47.9% downturn in employment from a month earlier.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the largest theater operator in the U.S., closed its more than 630 U.S. theaters in March as a precautionary measure amid the coronavirus outbreak, leading to furloughs or layoffs for 26,000 theater employees. It also furloughed 600 of its corporate employees, including CEO Adam Aron. Industry peers Cinemark Holdings Inc. and Regal Entertainment, owned by Cineworld Group PLC, similarly shuttered all of their locations and laid off tens of thousands of domestic hourly theater staffers, while furloughing corporate workers.

The theater chains are reportedly eyeing summer openings, meaning many of those laid-off employees could soon come back to work, though the exact timeline remains unclear. In late April, the National Association of Theatre Owners, a trade group representing more than 33,000 movie screens across the country, warned that until the majority of markets in the U.S. are open, new wide-release movies are unlikely to be available and many theaters will not be able to feasibly open.

Looking at the information sector as a whole — which also includes industries such as publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications and data processing — job losses in the motion picture and sound recording subsector comprised more than 85% of all sector job losses over the period.

Still, other subsectors of the information industry faced notable jumps in unemployment in the month of April as well.

Broadcasting, which does not include internet services, saw a 4.6% downturn in employment between March and April, with 12,000 total jobs lost, according to the BLS survey.

The publishing industry, which also excludes internet services, lost more than 17,000 jobs over the same period, resulting in a 2.2% downturn in employment month over month.

All told, the information sector lost 254,000 jobs in April, according to BLS data.

Despite these losses, the industry has been relatively insulated from job losses over the same period compared to other nonfarm industries, data shows. The leisure and hospitality industry, for example, lost almost 7.7 million jobs in April, making up a significant percentage of the 20.5 million payroll jobs shed across the broader economy during the month. The trade, transportation and utilities sector experienced over 3 million job losses in the month as well. Other industries, such as education and health services, professional and business services, manufacturing, construction, local government and financial activities all lost more jobs than the information sector in the month of April.

Across the economy, the unemployment rate climbed to 14.7% from 4.4%, marking the highest rate and the largest month-over-month increase since the series began in 1948, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

The information sector's share of nonfarm payroll employment has slowly been declining since 2008. Data released on May 8 by BLS shows the sector makes up just 2.4% of total nonfarm payroll employment and is the third smallest industry as a percentage of total nonfarm payroll employment, only ahead of mining and logging and utilities.

All told, BLS data shows the industry employs about 2.6 million people out of over 109 million Americans employed in the private sector.

Information employment is at its lowest level since August 2011, when a large strike impacted the industry, according to BLS.

In addition to being spared some of the heavier job losses, the information sector continues to offer the highest average hourly wage, at $43.78, among industries in the private sector, the survey data shows. By comparison, total private hourly earnings across industries average $30.01.

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