I agree that LA is a pretty good place right now. Industry is good, and you get a lot of the cultural benefits of a big city without the ridiculous costs of the Bay Area or NYC.
I moved into a 1BR for $1500 in nearby Culver City, which cut my commute down to 20-25 minutes. Not so bad. I'm across the street from a little downtown area with bars, restaurants, a movie theatre, 3 yoga studios, and a grocery store. Fairly walkable.
The job market is pretty hot. The problem in my job search was lining up interviews to get as many offers as possible at once so I could have my pick of the litter.
And even nicer weather than the Bay Area to boot.
The downtown / Santa Monica Expo line extension is opening in March, the Gold line is opening a bunch of new stations in April, extending it almost all the way to Claremont, and they have an LAX metro line they're building to prevent the traffic clusterf* that LAX has become.
One example is my gf: set production assistant wages have not gone up with cost of living in the area, at least for the companies she works for. Set production assistants are freelance, non-reliable work with sometimes terrible hours. You think they'd make okay money. But even in L.A. where the industry is at it's biggest, they're usually shortchanged.
Another example: A friend of mine accepted a position as a mid-level gameplay programmer at a place that is choosing to pay them hourly so they can make them work overtime without having to pay $100k or more, because of CA law. Yet another business strong-arming someone who wasn't in a good position to negotiate due to circumstances. Hopefully that friend can work their way into a senior level position soon, but even then not every place pays senior level as well as they should.
Industry can be very stingy, focusing on the short-term business instead of long term employees.