Having grown up in LA, I think I agree with you. In the 80s and 90s I knew a lot of people whose parents were involved with entertainment, and they weren't mega rich. They were middle class or upper middle class. They had consistent work at good wages, and they worked on films with small budgets that were in the theater for a week or two, which was long enough to make back their budget but not much more.

A lot of those people work on small budget stuff for Hulu and Netflix now (as you point out). I think the big streamers have replaced the big studios as far as funding small budget work (single digit millions budgets).