Table of Contents

Data refreshed June 2026 using the latest available federal, state, and regional sources. Federal payroll employment series are current through April 2026 preliminary data, the latest release available, published in May 2026, from BLS Current Employment Statistics; labor force and unemployment series are current through April 2026 preliminary BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics reflect May 2025 data. Demographic data reflect U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 estimates and California Department of Finance January 2026 county estimates. Housing data reflect California Association of Realtors April 2026 reporting. The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario Metropolitan Statistical Area includes both Riverside County and San Bernardino County in their entirety, encompassing the urbanized Inland Empire and the desert communities of the Coachella and Victor Valleys. References to “the Inland Empire” in this report refer to the MSA unless otherwise noted.

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Executive Summary

~1.72 million — Inland Empire nonfarm payroll employment (BLS CES, April 2026 preliminary)

4.9% — Inland Empire unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted (BLS LAUS, April 2026 preliminary)

~16% — Average IE hourly wage gap to the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA (BLS OEWS, May 2025)

The Inland Empire workforce enters mid-2026 with a more uncertain set of fundamentals than the headline numbers suggest. Current BLS benchmark revisions put total nonfarm employment at roughly 1.72 million in April 2026, essentially flat from a year earlier and materially below the January level cited in the original April report. The aggregate number still describes a very large labor market, but the revised series makes the structural shift underneath it clearer.

The updated BLS industry mix keeps the report’s central thesis intact while changing several of the numbers. Education and Health Services remains the clear growth engine, up 6.1% year over year. By contrast, Manufacturing is down 4.2%, Construction is down 4.0%, Professional and Business Services is down 3.5%, Financial Activities is down 4.1%, Government is down 1.3%, and Trade, Transportation, and Utilities is flat. The logistics-heavy core of the region is no longer generating the broad employment growth it did during the post-COVID warehousing boom.

The unemployment picture remains mixed. The not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 4.9% in April 2026, with 107,600 unemployed residents in the BLS LAUS series. But the civilian labor force was 2.214 million in April, so the lower raw unemployment rate should not be read as simple hiring strength. It reflects both job finding and a smaller measured labor force in the latest monthly series.

The compositional story matters more than the headline. Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government still account for more than half of total Inland Empire employment, but the stress is uneven rather than identical across all three. Healthcare is still growing strongly in the BLS data. Logistics remains in an extended adjustment from the post-COVID warehousing boom, with the region having lost approximately 26,000 logistics jobs in the first half of 2025 according to Inland Economic Growth and Opportunity (IEGO) and industrial vacancy near multi-year highs in early 2026. Local Government was revised downward in early 2026 and is now down year over year in the BLS series.

Wages tell a parallel story of structural constraint. Workers in the Inland Empire earned an average of $31.33 per hour in May 2025, compared to $37.15 in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA and $33.54 nationally. The roughly 16% wage discount to the coastal Southern California labor market is not a passing feature of the cycle. It is a structural condition that shapes hiring strategy across every Amtec industry vertical operating in the region: manufacturing, engineering, construction, and skilled trades.

For Inland Empire hiring managers, 2026 is a year in which the workforce reality is more nuanced than the unemployment rate alone communicates. The labor pool is large, still more affordable than coastal Southern California, and increasingly diverse in industry experience as logistics, construction, and manufacturing soften. But a smaller measured labor force in the latest monthly series, sector concentration, and the 16% coastal wage pull all create planning risk. Firms that build workforce strategy around the structural realities of the IE (its compositional concentration, its wage-gap dynamics, its housing-cost offsets, and the post-logistics labor pool now reentering the broader labor market) will be better positioned than those that plan against headline figures alone.

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Key Inland Empire Workforce Benchmarks at a Glance (2026)

Workforce Size

Total nonfarm employment: ~1,722,600 (April 2026, preliminary) — BLS CES
Civilian labor force: ~2,213,600 (April 2026, preliminary) — BLS LAUS
Employed residents: ~2,106,000 (April 2026, preliminary) — BLS LAUS
Total population: ~4,723,500 (January 2026 county estimate) — California Department of Finance

Labor Availability

Unemployment rate: 4.9% (April 2026, not seasonally adjusted) — BLS LAUS
Unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted: 5.4% (April 2026) — FRED/BLS LAUS
Unemployed residents: ~107,600 (April 2026, preliminary)

Wage Benchmarks

Average hourly wage, all IE workers: $31.33 (May 2025) — BLS OEWS
LA-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA average wage: $37.15 (May 2025) — BLS OEWS
National average hourly wage: $33.54 (May 2025) — BLS OEWS
IE-to-LA wage gap: ~16%; IE-to-national gap: ~7%

Industry Composition (Location Quotient vs. National)

Transportation and material moving: 15.9% of employment vs. 8.8% nationally — BLS OEWS
Office and administrative support: 9.9% of employment — BLS OEWS
Food preparation and serving related: 9.9% of employment — BLS OEWS

Sectoral Employment Trends (year-over-year)

Education and Health Services: +6.1% (BLS CES, April 2026 preliminary)
Trade, Transportation, and Utilities: 0.0%
Government: −1.3%
Professional and Business Services: −3.5%
Construction: −4.0%
Financial Activities: −4.1%
Manufacturing: −4.2%

Demographics

Foreign-born share of population: 21.8% (U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024)
Average commute time: 33.2 minutes
Median property value: $536,300
Homeownership rate: 65.8%

Logistics Sector Context

Warehouses in the region: 4,000+ covering approximately 40 square miles (CalMatters / UC Riverside, 2025)
Logistics jobs lost in H1 2025: ~26,000 (IEGO via Community Forward Redlands)
Inland Empire industrial vacancy: ~7.8% to 8.5% in Q1 2026 across major brokerage trackers, with some broader measures nearer 10% (CBRE, Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield)

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1. Overview of the Inland Empire Workforce

~1.72 million Total nonfarm payroll employment in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA (April 2026 preliminary)

The Inland Empire is, by total employment, one of the largest metropolitan workforces in the United States. The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA recorded 1,722,600 nonfarm payroll jobs in April 2026, per the current BLS series available in June 2026, according to BLS Current Employment Statistics, with total nonfarm employment essentially flat from a year earlier. Current BLS benchmark revisions place the January 2026 level at roughly 1,723,000, materially below the 1.744 million figure available when the original report was compiled.

The MSA encompasses both Riverside County and San Bernardino County in their entirety, an area covering more than 27,000 square miles and home to approximately 4.72 million residents according to California Department of Finance January 2026 county estimates. The two counties are economically integrated but not identical: San Bernardino County tends to run a higher share of logistics and manufacturing employment, while Riverside County skews slightly more toward healthcare, government, and consumer services. Both counties contain principal cities (Chino, Corona, Ontario, Redlands, Riverside, San Bernardino, Temecula, and Victorville) that anchor distinct labor sub-markets. For workforce planning purposes, the MSA is the cleanest available unit, but local hiring managers should expect meaningful variation between sub-areas.

The region’s industry composition is distinctive in ways that materially shape hiring decisions. Trade, Transportation, and Utilities, the BLS supersector that includes most logistics employment, accounted for 448,400 jobs in April 2026, the largest single industry grouping in the MSA. Education and Health Services followed at 357,600, and Government at 267,100. Together these three industry groupings represent roughly 62% of total nonfarm employment. The Inland Empire Economic Partnership has noted that when narrowed to the more specific sector groupings of Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government, the three sectors account for more than 50% of regional employment.

Manufacturing and Construction employed 92,200 and 107,900 workers respectively in April 2026. Both remained down year over year: manufacturing by 4.2% and construction by 4.0%. The construction decline is less severe than the original January figures suggested, but both sectors remain clear sources of labor-market softness.

The labor force itself remains large, but the latest monthly series no longer supports a simple “recently expanding” reading. The civilian labor force measured 2,213,600 in April 2026 according to BLS LAUS, with 2,106,000 employed residents and approximately 107,600 unemployed. Beacon Economics has noted that the region’s labor force grew 6.7% between 2020 and 2025, and total employment increased 7.3% over the same five-year period. By contrast, both Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area lost both jobs and labor force participants over the same period, per Beacon’s data. The long-run growth story still matters, but the early-2026 monthly data show a smaller measured labor force after revisions.

The workforce’s sustained long-run growth, even in an uneven labor market, has been a structural feature of the Inland Empire for at least a decade. The region’s housing affordability relative to coastal Southern California, its proximity to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and its abundant land for warehouse and industrial development have collectively made it a destination for both domestic in-migration and labor market expansion. In 2026, however, that growth story is more tentative: population is still edging up, but labor force and payroll readings are flatter than the original April report implied.

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2. The Inland Empire Wage Gap: IE vs. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim vs. National

~16% Inland Empire average hourly wage discount relative to the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA (May 2025)

The single most consequential piece of compensation context for any Inland Empire hiring manager is the wage gap to the coastal Southern California labor market. According to the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables, workers in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA had an average (mean) hourly wage of $31.33, compared to $37.15 in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA and $33.54 nationally.

The 16% wage gap (more precisely, 15.7% below the LA-LB-Anaheim average) is not uniform across occupations. It is wider for some categories and narrower or reversed for others. The pattern matters because it shapes which roles are most exposed to wage competition from coastal employers and which are not.

The wage gap to LA/OC tends to be wider in the higher-paying occupational major groups, though it varies by occupation. Management roles averaged $63.46 per hour in the Inland Empire in May 2025, compared to $77.12 in LA-LB-Anaheim, a gap of roughly 18%, wider than the regionwide 16%. Legal occupations averaged $74.95 in the IE versus $85.92 in LA-LB-Anaheim in the same data, a narrower gap of about 13%. Computer and mathematical occupations also run below their coastal counterparts. These gaps reflect a coastal premium for roles where the talent supply is limited and the work is concentrated in headquartered firms that disproportionately locate in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

The wage gap narrows or reverses for some occupational categories. Healthcare practitioners and technical workers earned $59.79 per hour in the IE in May 2025, a substantial figure that reflects national healthcare wage trends rather than IE-specific economics and that runs essentially even with the $59.61 LA-LB-Anaheim average for the same group. Several major occupational groups in the IE actually exceeded their respective national averages in May 2025, including healthcare practitioners and technical, educational instruction and library, community and social service, and protective service.

For occupations with high IE concentration but moderate wages, the picture is more mixed. Transportation and material moving occupations, the IE’s largest employment category, paid wages broadly comparable to national averages, and within that category, IE wages for hand laborers, freight, stock, and material movers, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, and stockers and order fillers tend to track closely with LA-LB-Anaheim figures because warehouse labor competes across MSA lines for the same regional logistics network.

The Inland Empire’s overall wage gap to the national average was about 7% in May 2025 ($31.33 versus $33.54). The region’s average wage has historically been below the national mean, and the gap reflects both occupational composition (more transportation, retail, and food service employment than the national mix) and within-occupation wage differences in some categories.

For hiring managers, the implication is direct. Compensation benchmarks need to be calibrated to the role’s actual labor market, not the regional average. For management, engineering, computer science, and other occupations where talent moves freely between the Inland Empire and coastal Southern California, IE-specific wage benchmarks understate competitive compensation requirements. For warehouse, production, and service roles where the labor pool is more locally rooted, the gap narrows and IE benchmarks more closely reflect market reality.

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3. Cost of Living, Housing, and the Hiring Reality

$600,000 Median Inland Empire existing single-family home price (California Association of Realtors, April 2026)

The 16% wage gap to LA/OC does not, on its own, capture what Inland Empire workers actually experience as compensation. The wage gap exists in part because the cost of living, and especially the cost of housing, is substantially lower in the Inland Empire than in the coastal Southern California labor markets that bound it.

According to U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 data, the median property value across the Inland Empire was $536,300 with a homeownership rate of 65.8%. The California Association of Realtors reported a median existing single-family home price of $600,000 for the Inland Empire in April 2026, down 2.0% from a year earlier. Riverside County stood at $640,000 and San Bernardino County at $495,000. By comparison, Los Angeles County and Orange County medians remained substantially higher, with Orange County at $1.47 million in the same C.A.R. release.

The cost-of-living differential between the Inland Empire and the coastal Southern California labor markets is in many cases the single largest factor in a worker’s effective total compensation. For roles with median annual earnings in the $50,000–$80,000 range, a home-price difference of several hundred thousand dollars versus Los Angeles County, and substantially more versus Orange County, can translate to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month in mortgage payment differences, often more than the after-tax difference in nominal wages between the markets for the same occupation.

However, the cost-of-living advantage is partially offset by commute realities. Average commute time across the Inland Empire is 33.2 minutes per the ACS 2024, among the longer averages in the country, and a meaningful share of Inland Empire residents work in coastal Los Angeles County or Orange County. The IE-to-LA/OC commute pattern is well-documented and shapes the regional labor market in two ways: it gives Inland Empire residents access to LA/OC wages without LA/OC housing costs, and it drains a portion of the local labor pool away from in-MSA employers.

For Inland Empire hiring managers, the practical implication is that IE-based employers do not just compete with each other for IE-resident workers. They compete with LA/OC employers in a market where IE average wages are roughly 16% lower than the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim benchmark, and they compete with the cost-of-living equation that makes those commutes acceptable for many workers despite the time costs.

The region’s housing market itself is also a labor market signal. C.A.R.’s April 2026 data shows the Inland Empire remaining far more affordable than coastal Southern California, but not immune to higher-rate pressure: the median price was down 2.0% year over year and sales were down 6.0%. That softening should temper, not erase, the in-migration thesis. The IE remains the region’s major affordability outlet, but the latest labor force readings show that housing advantage is no guarantee of uninterrupted labor-pool expansion.

For employers, the labor pool is real and structurally large. The competition for that labor pool, however, is more intense than the headline IE unemployment rate suggests, because so much of it is tradable across the LA/OC commute zone and because the latest measured labor force is smaller than earlier 2026 data implied.

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4. Hiring Pressure and Labor Availability

4.9% Inland Empire unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted, April 2026

The Inland Empire’s labor market in 2026 remains easier than the tightest coastal Southern California markets, but the improvement is uneven and partially explained by a smaller measured labor force in the latest monthly series rather than employment growth alone.

According to BLS LAUS data, the Inland Empire’s not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate stood at 4.9% in April 2026, with approximately 107,600 unemployed residents. The seasonally adjusted rate was 5.4% in April, according to the FRED series for the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA.

The structural caveat bears on interpretation: the measured labor force was 2.214 million in April, smaller in the latest monthly series than the early-2026 data first implied. A smaller measured labor force can mechanically lower the raw unemployment rate even when payroll growth is flat. The data itself does not specify whether the smaller reading reflects discouraged workers, migration, demographic shifts, or benchmark revision effects, so the safer interpretation is that labor availability remains uneven rather than broadly abundant.

Comparing IE unemployment to broader benchmarks, the region remains above the national rate and close to California’s higher-unemployment pattern. This is familiar territory. The Inland Empire has historically run unemployment above the national average, and the gap reflects both the region’s industry composition (overweight in cyclically sensitive sectors like construction and logistics) and its labor force dynamics. IEEP economist Manfred Keil has noted that “unemployment rates in the ’90s and following the housing market collapse were significantly higher in the Inland Empire than the state and national unemployment rates,” a pattern tied to the region’s lack of sectoral diversification.

The gross sectoral movement underlying the headline rate is more revealing than the rate itself. In the April 2026 BLS series, Education and Health Services was the major growth engine at +6.1% year over year. The other large signals were softer: Trade, Transportation, and Utilities was flat, Government was down 1.3%, Professional and Business Services was down 3.5%, Construction was down 4.0%, Financial Activities was down 4.1%, and Manufacturing was down 4.2%. The pattern is not a broad-based expansion. It is a large labor market with one major growth sector and multiple areas of slack.

For hiring managers, the labor market is best understood as compositionally fragmented. There is real labor availability for employers willing to hire candidates with backgrounds in logistics, construction, professional services, or manufacturing: sectors that have been flat or shedding workers. There is genuine scarcity in healthcare, where employment growth continues to absorb labor. And there is volatility in Government, which was revised downward in early 2026 and is now negative year over year in the BLS series.

The Beacon Economics observation that the Inland Empire outperformed Los Angeles and the Bay Area in labor force and employment growth from 2020 to 2025 still holds in aggregate. But the current monthly data require more caution: the composition of growth is increasingly concentrated, and the region’s labor-market resilience depends on a narrow base of sectors while the measured labor force is smaller in the latest monthly series.

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5. The Structural Concentration: Three Sectors, More Than Half of IE Employment

>50% Share of total Inland Empire employment in Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government combined (IEEP, April 2026)

The defining structural feature of the Inland Empire workforce in 2026 is its concentration in three sectors. Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government together account for more than half of total regional employment, and the durability of overall IE job growth depends substantially on whether those three sectors remain stable.

The framing comes from IEEP Chief Economist Manfred Keil, who described the IE economy at the partnership’s 2026 State of the Region conference as “a House with a View Sitting on Three Stilts.” The view is the region’s strong recent performance: labor force growth, employment growth, in-migration, housing demand. The stilts are the three sectors carrying the load. The risk is that one or more of the stilts gives way.

In mid-2026, the three-sector concentration remains the key planning issue, but the signals are not uniform.

Health Services remains the principal engine of regional job growth. Education and Health Services employment reached 357,600 in April 2026 per BLS CES, up 6.1% year over year. That makes healthcare the clearest source of current hiring strength in the Inland Empire. Policy and reimbursement risk still matter for longer-range planning, but the updated BLS data no longer supports treating a single February decline as the dominant near-term signal.

Logistics climbed to second place in regional employment in San Bernardino County by 2024-2025 and remains one of the largest industry employers in the broader IE. But the sector is in what economists describe as a “freight recession”: a period of stalled growth following the post-COVID overbuild of warehouse capacity and labor. According to Inland Economic Growth and Opportunity (IEGO), the Inland Empire lost approximately 26,000 logistics jobs in the first half of 2025, erasing much of the sector’s growth from the prior five years. Trade, Transportation, and Utilities employment in BLS CES data totaled 448,400 in April 2026 and was flat year over year. That is stabilization, not a return to the sector’s historic role as the IE’s primary growth driver.

Local Government employment was substantially revised downward in early 2026 EDD revisions. IEEP describes the previous reported gains in Local Government (Public Education) as “a mirage that disappeared when the annual data adjustments were made.” In the updated BLS supersector data, Government employment was 267,100 in April 2026, down 1.3% year over year. The driver is California’s broader fiscal pressure, benchmark revision effects, and demographic shifts that are reducing K-12 enrollment in many communities.

The compositional risk this creates is not new for the Inland Empire. Keil notes that the region experienced similar concentration shocks in earlier cycles: the post-Cold War defense drawdown (“peace dividend”) that hit the Riverside MSA hard in the 1990s, and the housing-market collapse of 2008–2009 that produced regional unemployment substantially above state and national averages. The pattern is consistent: when the IE depends on a small number of sectors, vulnerability concentrates.

For hiring managers in the Inland Empire’s smaller industries (manufacturing, engineering, professional services, construction outside of warehouse-related work), the implication is that regional employment data needs to be read with the compositional concentration in mind. The unemployment rate captures the IE as a whole; it does not tell you whether the IE labor market specific to your industry is loosening or tightening. In several Amtec verticals, the answer is that the labor market has loosened as logistics, construction, manufacturing, and professional-services employers have stopped adding or have shed workers while the Health sector absorbed the headline employment growth.

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6. The Logistics Adjustment: 26,000 Jobs Lost, Elevated Vacancy, and a Workforce in Transition

4,000+ Warehouses operating in the Inland Empire, covering approximately 40 square miles (CalMatters / UC Riverside, 2025)

The Inland Empire’s identity as a logistics workforce capital is so entrenched that it shapes the available labor pool for every other industry in the region, including the industries that don’t directly compete with logistics for workers.

The scale is genuinely distinctive. Per UC Riverside research cited by CalMatters in 2025, there are more than 4,000 warehouses in the Inland Empire, covering approximately 40 square miles. Logistics employment accounted for nearly 10% of jobs in Riverside County and more than 16% in San Bernardino County in 2021–2022, per the same UCR data. In May 2025, stockers and order fillers numbered 77,160 in the Inland Empire per BLS OEWS, and hand laborers and freight, stock, and material movers numbered 69,820, two of the largest detailed occupations in the MSA. Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers totaled 40,230. Together, those three occupations alone accounted for roughly 187,000 jobs. These OEWS figures count workers by occupation across all industries, including retail and grocery, not just warehousing. They are modeled on a rolling three-year sample. For that reason they do not move in step with the month-to-month CES logistics payroll counts, and the two measures should not be read as the same thing.

The post-COVID warehousing boom drove an additional 47,000 transportation and warehousing jobs into the region over five years, according to IEGO’s accounting. But that engine has reversed. IEGO reported that the Inland Empire lost approximately 26,000 logistics jobs in the first half of 2025, with June 2025 marking the sixth consecutive month of sectoral job losses. The losses reflected several converging factors: post-COVID consumer spending shifts away from goods toward services, port traffic redistribution between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, automation in warehouse operations, and macroeconomic uncertainty around tariff policy.

The real estate market provides a parallel signal. Q1 2026 brokerage trackers put Inland Empire industrial vacancy around the high-7% to mid-8% range: CBRE reported 7.8% for the IE Core, Colliers reported 8.1%, and Cushman & Wakefield reported 8.5%. Several reports also noted negative absorption and large move-outs of one-million-square-foot-plus facilities. Construction starts have slowed materially from the boom years, which is a forward indicator that the warehousing capacity buildup has substantially paused.

Beacon Economics’ Christopher Thornberg has framed the dynamic plainly: “Logistics saw a huge upsurge in 2022 because of spending, supply chains and the pandemic. Now people are spending more on restaurants and travel than campers and PlayStations.” The corollary, in Thornberg’s analysis, is that “it’s not like logistics is doing well.” But the longer-term outlook is for stabilization rather than further contraction, because “ultimately we need stuff from overseas. Even with tariffs, we’re going to buy the stuff.”

For hiring managers in non-logistics industries, the implication is direct and specific, but it should be stated carefully. The H1 2025 logistics contraction likely increased the number of Inland Empire workers with warehouse, distribution, or transportation experience who are open to adjacent roles, though not every lost logistics job translates into an immediately available candidate. Some workers have moved out of the region, retired, taken work in other sectors, or shifted into part-time arrangements. The April 2026 Trade, Transportation, and Utilities data show stabilization rather than continued contraction, so employers should evaluate logistics-experienced candidates without assuming a deep pool of immediately available labor at discounted wages. Many still have transferable skills that map cleanly onto manufacturing assembly, construction labor, skilled-trades-adjacent roles, and warehouse-adjacent operations roles.

Hiring managers in Amtec’s manufacturing, engineering, and construction verticals should evaluate logistics-experienced candidates carefully rather than excluding them on assumption. The labor pool has shifted, and the 2026 IE workforce includes workers whose skills are more transferable than the resume sector listing alone suggests.

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7. Manufacturing Workforce in the Inland Empire

92,200 Inland Empire manufacturing employment, April 2026 (BLS CES, preliminary)

The Inland Empire manufacturing workforce contracted through 2025 and has continued to soften in 2026. Total manufacturing employment in the MSA stood at 92,200 in April 2026 according to BLS CES data, down 4.2% from a year earlier. The contraction is consistent with national manufacturing trends documented in Amtec’s State of the U.S. Manufacturing Workforce Report, while the IE decline is sharper than the national pattern because the region is also absorbing the logistics and construction adjustment around it.

The updated BLS series registers a similar trajectory at the IE level: manufacturing remains one of the clearest year-over-year decliners among major sectors. The contraction appears broad-based rather than concentrated in a single subsector, which suggests the dynamic reflects regional and national demand softness rather than an idiosyncratic local shock.

The Inland Empire’s manufacturing footprint is meaningful in absolute size (92,200 workers), but it is smaller as a share of total employment than the national average. Manufacturing accounts for roughly 5.4% of IE nonfarm employment, compared to roughly 8% nationally. The IE’s industrial economy is concentrated in fabricated metal products, machinery, food, transportation equipment, and plastics. Aerospace and defense manufacturing has limited direct presence in the region, with most of the SoCal A&D cluster located in coastal Los Angeles County and Orange County.

On compensation, the OEWS May 2025 data offers role-level benchmarks for the manufacturing occupations Amtec actively places. While the BLS does not publish a manufacturing-industry-specific wage cut at the MSA level, the cross-industry occupational data for the Inland Empire provides usable benchmarks for the most common manufacturing roles:

Industrial engineers, mechanical engineers, and quality engineers in the Inland Empire commanded wages that tracked broadly with national medians but ran below LA-LB-Anaheim benchmarks for the same occupations, consistent with the region-wide 16% wage gap. Skilled trades roles within manufacturing (machinists, CNC operators, assemblers, maintenance technicians, quality inspectors) commanded IE wages that were closer to national medians and in some cases competitive with LA-LB-Anaheim, reflecting the regional concentration of industrial production work and the limited supply of skilled tradespeople.

For hiring managers, the practical question is how to translate national OEWS medians into IE-specific compensation budgets. Two principles are useful. First, for roles in which talent is highly mobile across the IE/LA-OC line (particularly engineering, quality, and management roles), IE-specific benchmarks understate competitive compensation requirements, because the candidates who command top quartile compensation often also have offers from coastal employers who pay 16% more. Second, for skilled trades roles where workers are more locally rooted, IE benchmarks reflect market reality and are reliable for compensation planning, though employers should expect that experienced candidates with specific certifications (welding, ASME, ISO-9001, A&D-relevant work) will command premiums above the regional median.

The contraction in IE manufacturing employment also produces a labor market reality that hiring managers can use. Workers displaced from manufacturing positions in 2025 and early 2026 are entering job-seeking status at exactly the moment that available manufacturing employers, particularly those expanding rather than contracting, can hire them. The pool of available manufacturing-experienced labor in the IE is materially larger in 2026 than it was in 2024.

Related: Read Amtec’s State of the U.S. Manufacturing Workforce for national context on the manufacturing dynamics shaping IE employers.

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8. Engineering and Technical Workforce in the Inland Empire

153,800 Inland Empire Professional and Business Services employment, April 2026 (BLS CES, preliminary)

Engineering and technical employment is one of the Inland Empire’s smaller sectors by share of total employment, but it is one of the most consequential for Amtec’s placement work and one of the most distinctive for IE/LA-OC competitive dynamics.

The May 2025 OEWS data shows that architecture and engineering occupations accounted for a smaller share of Inland Empire employment than the national average. Engineering employment is concentrated in industrial engineering, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering disciplines that align with the region’s industrial base: manufacturing, construction, infrastructure, and increasingly advanced manufacturing tied to the IEGO-led economic development push.

The structural challenge for IE engineering hiring is that the wage gap to LA/OC is widest precisely in the engineering and technical occupational categories. Engineers and technical professionals are among the most mobile workers in the regional labor market. They can credibly accept positions in El Segundo, Long Beach, Anaheim, or Irvine while continuing to live in Corona, Chino Hills, Riverside, or Temecula, and many do. The 33.2-minute average IE commute time per ACS 2024 understates the commute distance for the workers in this category, who often commute 60–90 minutes each way to access LA/OC engineering employment.

The implication is that an Inland Empire engineering employer is competing not just with the regional market, where unemployment among engineers is typically low and the supply is limited, but with the much larger, higher-paying coastal market that pulls IE-resident engineering talent westward each weekday. For some engineering and technical roles, especially mid-career and senior positions, the competitive gap can exceed the regionwide 16% average because candidates often compare IE offers directly against LA/OC opportunities.

For IE engineering employers, the strategic options narrow accordingly. Closing the wage gap to coastal compensation reduces the in-MSA hiring penalty but increases compensation cost. Building a non-wage retention story (shorter commutes, hybrid work flexibility, growth opportunities, equity participation) can be effective for some candidates but requires deliberate investment. Partnering with regional educational institutions (UC Riverside’s College of Engineering, Cal Poly Pomona, the Cal State San Bernardino programs, and the regional community colleges) to cultivate domestic talent pipelines is a longer-term play that produces results over years rather than months.

The Inland Empire Center for Forecasting at UC Riverside and IEGO’s California Jobs First initiative have both flagged advanced manufacturing, clean technology, and cybersecurity as “tradable sectors” the region is targeting for engineering employment growth. IEGO Executive Director Matthew Mena has framed the strategy directly: “These are industries where we can influence growth, wages, and sustainability.” The implication for engineering hiring managers is that the IE engineering labor market is likely to thicken modestly through the second half of the decade as economic development investment and CTE program output reaches the workforce. Through 2026, however, engineering hiring in the Inland Empire remains the single most LA/OC-competitive segment of the region’s labor market.

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9. Construction and Skilled Trades

107,900 Inland Empire construction employment, April 2026 (BLS CES, preliminary)

Construction employment in the Inland Empire has contracted over the past year, though the updated decline is less severe than the original January figures suggested. Total construction employment stood at 107,900 in April 2026 according to BLS CES data, down 4.0% from a year earlier. That still makes construction one of the region’s weaker major employment groups, but it is no longer the extreme outlier implied by the earlier 7.2% reading.

The construction contraction has been driven by several converging dynamics. Warehouse and industrial construction, which had been a major regional driver, slowed sharply as the post-COVID logistics buildout completed and demand softened. Residential construction has been constrained by elevated mortgage rates and California’s permitting complexity. Specialty trade contractor employment has declined particularly sharply, mirroring the national pattern documented in Amtec’s State of the U.S. Construction Workforce Report.

The contraction has registered across multiple recent releases and is consistent with the slowdown in industrial buildout. It should be read as continued softness rather than collapse: warehouse-related construction is no longer carrying the sector the way it did during the boom, but replacement, infrastructure, healthcare, public-sector, and smaller commercial projects still support demand for experienced trades.

The OEWS May 2025 data provides occupational-level wage benchmarks for the construction trades Amtec places into the Inland Empire. Construction and extraction occupations in the IE averaged $34.66 per hour, above the $31.42 national average for the same occupations, per the BLS OEWS May 2025 data. This is one of the relatively few occupational categories where IE wages run above the national mean. The above-national IE wage in construction reflects the broader Southern California construction wage premium and the active union presence in many IE trades.

That construction wage advantage has implications for the broader IE workforce dynamics. Trades workers in the Inland Empire often cross MSA lines for work, taking jobs in Los Angeles County, Orange County, or even San Diego County for major projects. The trade unions operate across the broader Southern California region, which means IE construction wages do not move independently from coastal SoCal construction wages. When LA/OC construction is strong (as it has been through periods of major data center and infrastructure investment) and IE construction softens, the IE labor pool is partially absorbed by coastal projects rather than fully unemployed.

For hiring managers, the IE construction labor market in 2026 is a paradox. Aggregate construction employment is down. Available workers should, in theory, be plentiful. But the most experienced, certified, and licensed construction professionals (particularly licensed electricians, journeyman plumbers, ASE-certified HVAC technicians, and senior project managers) remain scarce because they are absorbed by coastal SoCal projects that pay slightly more or by the residual IE projects that survive the broader contraction. The labor market is bifurcated between abundant supply for entry-level trades roles and persistent scarcity for licensed and experienced trades professionals.

The OEWS data also captures the union-nonunion wage premium that runs through the IE construction workforce. Union construction trades in the Inland Empire continue to command meaningful wage premiums over nonunion comparable work, though the gap has been compressed somewhat as nonunion contractors have raised pay to compete for skilled labor in a market where labor availability is the binding constraint on project delivery.

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10. Aerospace, Defense, and Specialty Manufacturing in the Inland Empire

The Inland Empire’s aerospace and defense workforce is small in absolute terms relative to coastal Southern California, but it is real and worth specific attention from hiring managers in the IE who serve A&D supply chain customers.

The region’s primary direct A&D presence is anchored at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, which generates a substantial federal employment footprint and an associated supplier ecosystem. Beyond March ARB, the IE hosts scattered defense subcontractors, specialty manufacturers serving A&D supply chains, and electronics manufacturers whose customer base spans both commercial and defense applications. Many of these firms are tier-2 or tier-3 suppliers to primes located in coastal Los Angeles County and Orange County, where the bulk of the SoCal A&D cluster operates.

The SoCal A&D cluster (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing’s Southern California facilities, RTX, SpaceX in Hawthorne, the El Segundo aerospace hub) is overwhelmingly concentrated west of the Inland Empire. Amtec’s State of the U.S. Aerospace & Defense Workforce Report details the national context, including the FY2026 defense budget acceleration, the 70,000+ unfilled cleared positions across the U.S. defense sector, and the ~15% A&D industry attrition rate that the AIA/McKinsey 2025 study characterized as more than double the cross-industry average.

For Inland Empire hiring managers in A&D-adjacent roles, the practical reality is that the region’s A&D labor pool is partially shared with the coastal cluster. Cleared engineers and technicians who live in the Inland Empire often work for prime contractors in El Segundo, Long Beach, or Hawthorne, commuting daily across the MSA line. The IE-resident A&D workforce is real, but the IE-employed A&D workforce is smaller than the resident pool would suggest.

Specialty manufacturing roles tied to A&D supply chains (precision machinists, ITAR-eligible quality inspectors, certified welders, electronics assembly technicians) are present in IE manufacturing settings and command wage premiums consistent with the broader A&D labor market dynamics. The pool is small enough that IE A&D hiring is often a project-by-project sourcing exercise rather than a continuous pipeline activity. For IE-based firms entering A&D supply chain work, the workforce planning challenge is anticipating clearance and certification timelines (often 6–18 months for security clearance) and positioning the talent pipeline accordingly.

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11. Admin, Clerical, and Back-Office Workforce

~9.9% Office and administrative support occupations as a share of Inland Empire employment (BLS OEWS, May 2025)

Office and administrative support occupations are one of the largest occupational major groups in the Inland Empire, close behind food preparation and serving and transportation and material moving. Per the May 2025 OEWS data, administrative roles accounted for 9.9% of total IE employment, modestly below the national share. Census ACS 2024 data shows that Office and Administrative Support Occupations was the largest single job grouping for IE residents at 233,518 workers, with Sales and Related Occupations at 193,420 and Management Occupations at 189,627.

The IE wage gap to LA-LB-Anaheim operates in the admin and clerical workforce too. Coastal Southern California pays meaningfully more for executive assistants, office managers, HR generalists, accounting clerks, and bookkeeping roles. The wage gap is somewhat narrower than for engineering or management roles but still substantial, typically in the 10–18% range depending on the specific occupation.

A distinctive 2020s-era dynamic has reshaped this part of the IE labor market in ways the OEWS data alone does not fully capture. Many admin and clerical roles are now remote-eligible at the employer’s discretion. The implication for IE workforce dynamics is direct: Inland Empire residents can take LA/OC pay rates for remote-eligible admin work without commuting and without paying LA/OC housing costs. This effectively closes the wage gap for the segment of workers who can access remote opportunities.

For IE-based employers seeking in-office admin and clerical workers, the competitive pool has narrowed accordingly. Workers who could reasonably work remotely for an LA/OC firm at LA/OC pay are unlikely to accept lower-wage IE in-office positions unless the employer offers compensating differentials (substantially shorter commute, more flexibility, growth opportunity, or genuine cultural fit). The result is a bifurcated admin labor market in which remote-eligible workers are priced against coastal and even out-of-state benchmarks, while strict in-office workers are priced against the local IE market.

For hiring managers, this means OEWS data needs to be supplemented by an explicit decision about whether the role is remote-eligible. If yes, the relevant compensation benchmark is national or coastal SoCal, not IE. If strictly in-office, the IE OEWS benchmarks remain reliable, but the available labor pool is smaller than the aggregate workforce numbers suggest.

The structural growth of remote work in admin roles also affects employer real estate and workforce planning decisions in ways that haven’t fully worked through the data. Many IE-headquartered firms have reduced their in-office admin headcount over the past five years as remote work became normalized, while expanding overall admin support through a combination of remote IE residents, lower-cost out-of-state remote workers, and selectively retained in-office staff. The net effect on IE admin and clerical employment is a gradual softening that may not be visible in the high-level industry employment data.

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12. Local Economic Sentiment and the IE Forward Indicators

42.5 Inland Empire Purchasing Managers Index, December 2024, the lowest reading in over a year (Cal State San Bernardino Institute of Applied Research)

The Inland Empire benefits from one of the more developed local economic indicator infrastructures of any U.S. region of comparable size, and the regional indicators give workforce planners signals that the lagged federal data alone cannot.

The most-cited regional indicator is the Cal State San Bernardino Institute of Applied Research and Policy Analysis Inland Empire Purchasing Managers Index. The PMI is a monthly survey of regional manufacturers measuring new orders, production, employment, supplier deliveries, and inventories, and it provides one of the few timely signals of IE manufacturing sentiment. As reported by Inland Empire Business Daily, the index registered 42.5 in December 2024, signaling contraction (any reading below 50 indicates a contracting manufacturing sector). According to AmPac Business Capital’s synthesis of CSUSB IAR readings through 2025, the index then rose above 65 in early 2025, dropped below 50 by midyear, and settled in the mid-40s by late summer 2025. The volatility of the index over the course of 2025 reflects manufacturer uncertainty about tariff policy, broader macroeconomic conditions, and the regional logistics adjustment.

The Inland Empire Economic Partnership produces both an annual State of the Region report and monthly employment analyses that give regional employers timely interpretation of EDD data. The IEEP’s economic commentary, written by Chief Economist Manfred Keil, is widely cited in regional reporting and provides one of the few independent regional economic perspectives that combines federal data with local context.

Inland Economic Growth and Opportunity (IEGO) has emerged as a meaningful regional voice on workforce and labor market dynamics specifically. IEGO produces regional labor market briefs, coordinates the Inland Empire’s participation in the California Jobs First (formerly CERF) initiative, and maintains research relationships with the region’s 12 community colleges through the Inland Empire/Desert Regional Consortium. IEGO’s regional analyses have been particularly valuable for tracking the logistics workforce adjustment and for identifying the “tradable sectors” (advanced manufacturing, clean technology, cybersecurity) that the region is targeting for future growth.

Beacon Economics produces regional commentary on the Inland Empire that is widely cited in California policy and business reporting. Beacon Director Christopher Thornberg’s perspective on the IE relative to other California regions provides a useful comparative lens. Beacon’s data showing that the Inland Empire labor force grew 6.7% from 2020 to 2025 while Los Angeles and the Bay Area both lost jobs and workers is one of the cleanest comparative statements about the region’s recent performance.

Economist John Husing, principal of Economics & Politics, Inc., has been publishing Inland Empire-specific economic analysis for decades and is widely cited in regional trade press, academic research, and industry reports. Husing’s longitudinal perspective on the IE economy provides historical context for current dynamics that newer analytical sources cannot replicate.

CBRE’s Labor Analytics and industrial real estate research groups produce IE-specific reporting that has consistently tracked the warehouse vacancy trajectory through the 2025–2026 logistics adjustment, providing forward indicators for the regional logistics employment outlook.

For hiring managers, the practical takeaway is that the Inland Empire is genuinely well-instrumented with regional indicators. The federal CES and LAUS data establishes the headline labor market numbers; the IEEP analyses translate those numbers into compositional and structural framings; the CSUSB IAR PMI provides current manufacturer sentiment; the IEGO labor market briefs interpret sectoral dynamics; and the Beacon, Husing, and CBRE analyses provide comparative and structural context. Workforce planning that draws on all of these sources together, rather than any one in isolation, produces a more reliable picture of the IE labor market than any single data series can.

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13. Future Workforce Outlook (2026 and Beyond)

>50% Share of total Inland Empire employment in Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government combined, with the three sectors moving in different directions (IEEP, April 2026; updated against BLS April 2026 data)

The Inland Empire’s workforce challenges through 2026 and beyond are structural rather than cyclical. The region’s economic concentration in three sectors (Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government), combined with its position as the affordable-housing alternative to coastal Southern California, creates a workforce dynamic that is unlikely to resolve through ordinary cyclical adjustment.

The most consequential structural risk is that the region’s largest employment drivers are moving in different and fragile directions. Health Services has carried regional job growth and remains strongly positive in the updated BLS data. Logistics is in extended adjustment; the H1 2025 logistics contraction is unlikely to reverse quickly, and automation in warehouse operations, estimated by IEGO at affecting up to 60% of logistics jobs over time, is likely to constrain the sector’s labor demand even as activity stabilizes. Local Government has been substantially revised downward in early 2026 EDD data revisions and is now down year over year in the BLS Government supersector.

Any one of these sectors stabilizing or declining further would significantly shift the regional employment trajectory. The IEEP framing, which describes the IE as “a House with a View Sitting on Three Stilts,” captures the dynamic precisely. The question is not only whether the region’s workforce continues to grow in absolute terms, but whether the composition of that growth diversifies enough to reduce the structural risk.

Several positive forward indicators warrant attention. California Department of Finance estimates still show Riverside and San Bernardino counties adding population modestly into January 2026, and Beacon Economics’ comparative data showing IE labor force and employment growth outperforming both LA County and the Bay Area from 2020 to 2025 remains an important longer-run signal. Regional economic development efforts coordinated through IEGO, IEEP, and the California Jobs First initiative have explicitly targeted “tradable sectors” (advanced manufacturing, clean technology, cybersecurity) that could diversify the regional employment base over the second half of the decade. The region received $14 million through the California Jobs First framework, with continuing funding for early-stage projects and business ideas in those targeted sectors.

The demographic and educational pipeline is also large. The region is home to substantial higher education infrastructure including UC Riverside (7,319 degrees awarded in 2023), California State University-San Bernardino (5,141 degrees), and Riverside City College (4,706 degrees). The Inland Empire/Desert Regional Consortium of 12 community colleges produces a continuous flow of trades and technical graduates. The educational pipeline is sized for the region’s population and will continue to feed local labor supply.

The 2026 dynamic to watch most closely is whether the diversification into advanced manufacturing and tradable sectors proceeds quickly enough to offset the headwinds in Logistics, Manufacturing, Construction, Government, and parts of Professional and Business Services. The evidence through mid-2026 suggests the diversification is real but slower than the headwinds. Manufacturing employment has contracted year over year despite the diversification narrative, the regional PMI readings cited above indicate uneven manufacturer sentiment, Construction remains down year over year, and Professional and Business Services has softened.

A further set of macroeconomic conditions is shaping the 2026 outlook in ways that fall outside the labor market data but materially affect it. Elevated borrowing costs continue to constrain housing starts, automobile sales, durable consumption, and industrial expansion decisions, all dynamics that flow through to IE construction and manufacturing hiring. Tariff policy, fuel costs, port flows, and global supply-chain risk remain especially relevant for the region’s logistics and goods-movement employers. The labor market effects of those conditions are not always directly visible in monthly employment data, but they shape the conditions employers face in the second half of 2026 and beyond.

For hiring managers, the practical implication is that Inland Empire workforce planning through 2026 and beyond should account for both opportunity and risk. The opportunity is the labor pool: large, increasingly diverse in industry experience as logistics workers transition out of the sector, and competitively priced relative to coastal Southern California. The risk is the regional concentration: three large sectors carrying the load, with healthcare growing, logistics stabilizing at a weaker level, and government down after revisions. That mix can shift labor market conditions quickly if any of the major sectors deteriorates further.

Workforce strategy that combines internal development pathways for skilled trades, targeted recruitment for engineering and technical roles where IE supply is thin, and flexible staffing approaches to manage demand volatility will be better positioned than strategy that assumes the IE labor market will continue to behave as it did in 2022–2024.

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What This Means for Inland Empire Hiring Managers

The Inland Empire’s distinctive workforce dynamics produce a set of practical implications that apply across most Amtec verticals operating in the region.

Compensation budgets should be calibrated against the LA-Long Beach-Anaheim wage benchmark, not the IE-only or national benchmark, for any role where talent moves freely across the IE/LA-OC commute zone. The 16% regional wage discount is a competitive condition, not a savings opportunity. Engineering, management, computer and mathematical, and senior technical roles are the most exposed to coastal wage competition; production, trades, and entry-level admin roles are less exposed.

Cost-of-living offsets should be communicated in compensation conversations, not assumed. The IE/LA-OC housing differential genuinely improves IE worker total compensation relative to nominal wages, but candidates do not always do the math. Hiring conversations that explicitly frame the housing-cost advantage of an IE-resident position relative to LA/OC alternatives can make competitive IE offers more attractive than the wage gap alone would suggest.

Logistics-experienced candidates should be evaluated as a serious labor pool for non-logistics roles, not excluded by sector. The H1 2025 logistics contraction plus the ongoing freight-recession-driven attrition has expanded the pool of Inland Empire workers with operational experience available to other employers, though not every lost logistics job translates into an immediately available candidate. Many of those who remain in the regional labor market have transferable skills relevant to manufacturing assembly, construction labor, skilled-trades-adjacent roles, and warehouse-adjacent operations roles.

Engineering and technical roles will likely require either matching coastal compensation or building a non-wage retention story that works for the specific candidate. The IE engineering labor market is the most LA/OC-competitive segment of the regional workforce, and IE-only compensation benchmarks understate the actual hiring requirement for these roles.

Construction trades hiring should be planned as a Southern California regional market, not an IE-only one. Trades workers move across MSAs project-to-project, and IE construction wages do not move independently from coastal SoCal construction wages. The IE construction contraction registered in 2025–2026 BLS data is real, but the most experienced and licensed trades workers may be absorbed by coastal projects rather than fully unemployed.

Remote-eligible roles should be benchmarked separately from in-office roles, with compensation calibrated against the relevant talent pool. For remote-eligible admin, technical, and professional positions, the talent pool is national or coastal SoCal and the IE wage discount does not apply. For strictly in-office positions, IE benchmarks remain reliable and the local labor pool is the relevant frame.

Workforce planning should account for the regional concentration risk. Health, Logistics, and Local Government accounting for more than 50% of IE employment means that adverse developments in any of those sectors can shift labor market conditions quickly. Hiring managers in Amtec verticals outside those three sectors benefit from understanding the broader compositional dynamic, not just their own industry’s headline numbers.

The CSUSB IAR Inland Empire PMI, IEEP monthly employment analyses, and IEGO labor market briefs should be part of a regional workforce planning toolkit, not just BLS data alone. The IE economy moves faster than federal release schedules, and the regional indicators provide the timeliness that makes the difference between proactive and reactive hiring decisions.

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Key Takeaways for Inland Empire Hiring Managers

• The Inland Empire workforce is large, structurally distinctive, and shaped by its position between coastal Southern California and the broader inland economic geography.
• The region’s employment concentration in Health Services, Logistics, and Local Government (the three sectors that account for more than 50% of IE jobs) creates structural planning risk that hiring managers should account for explicitly.
• The 16% wage gap to Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim is a structural condition of the regional labor market, not a passing feature of the cycle, and it shapes hiring strategy across every industry vertical.
• Cost-of-living differentials partially offset the wage gap for many workers, but commute patterns drain part of the IE labor pool to coastal employers regardless.
• The 2025 logistics contraction and 2026 industrial vacancy cycle reshaped the available labor pool, but April 2026 Trade, Transportation, and Utilities employment suggests stabilization rather than continued contraction; hiring managers should evaluate logistics-experienced candidates without assuming a deep pool of immediately available labor.
• Engineering and technical hiring is the most LA/OC-competitive segment of the IE labor market and requires either competitive coastal compensation or a deliberate non-wage retention story.
• Construction trades hiring needs to be planned as a Southern California regional market, with the understanding that IE wages and labor availability move with coastal SoCal dynamics.
• Admin and clerical hiring is bifurcated by remote eligibility, with remote-eligible roles competing in a national or coastal labor market and strictly in-office roles competing in the local IE market.
• Regional indicators (CSUSB IAR PMI, IEEP analyses, IEGO labor market briefs, Beacon Economics commentary) provide timeliness and compositional context that BLS data alone does not, and IE workforce planning benefits from drawing on regional sources alongside federal data.
• The structural diversification toward advanced manufacturing, clean technology, and other tradable sectors targeted by California Jobs First and IEGO is real but slower than the contractions and flat spots in Logistics, Construction, Manufacturing, Government, and Professional and Business Services through mid-2026.

Related:

• Amtec’s State of the U.S. Manufacturing Workforce Report
• Amtec’s State of the U.S. Construction Workforce Report
• Amtec’s State of the U.S. Aerospace & Defense Workforce Report
• Amtec’s State of the U.S. Semiconductor Manufacturing Workforce Report

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Methodology & Sources

This report consolidates publicly available federal, state, and regional data sources to provide a comprehensive view of the Inland Empire workforce as of mid-2026.

The report was originally compiled in April 2026 and refreshed in June 2026 using the most current data available at the time of update. Federal payroll employment series are current through April 2026 preliminary BLS Current Employment Statistics, the latest release available, published in May 2026. Labor force and unemployment series are current through April 2026 preliminary BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics reflect the May 2025 release. Demographic data reflect the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates and California Department of Finance January 2026 county estimates. Housing data reflect the California Association of Realtors April 2026 median home price reports and Census property value estimates through 2024.

Limitations

This report draws on data series with different scopes, vintages, and methodologies. Several limitations warrant explicit acknowledgement:

BLS Current Employment Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, and California EDD industry employment data are subject to ongoing revision. The June 2026 refresh reflects current BLS benchmark revisions, which materially changed several January 2026 employment and labor-force levels cited in the original April report. Annual benchmark revisions, seasonal adjustment updates, and routine monthly revisions may change some published values again. Where headline figures are central to a hiring or planning decision, readers should verify against the most current BLS or EDD release before citing.

The May 2025 OEWS all-occupation wage benchmarks provide the most current official BLS wage comparison available at the time of the June 2026 refresh. Detailed occupation wage and employment figures in this report are drawn from the May 2025 OEWS estimates for the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA. OEWS estimates are modeled on a rolling three-year sample and should be treated as benchmarks, not a substitute for current employer compensation surveys.

MSA-level Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data is limited; most JOLTS detail is published only at the state and national level, restricting the report’s ability to characterize hiring dynamics at the IE level with the same granularity as the national reports cite.

The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA encompasses the entirety of Riverside County and San Bernardino County, including the Coachella and Victor Valleys and the desert communities. The colloquial “Inland Empire” as commonly understood is narrower than the BLS MSA, focused on the urbanized portions of western Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County. Where the report refers to “the Inland Empire,” it refers to the MSA unless otherwise noted.

Compensation bands cited in this report reflect occupational medians and averages from the OEWS data and do not capture role-specific premiums for skill, certification, security clearance, or industry-specific experience.

Some regional sources cited in this report (IEEP, IEGO, CSUSB IAR, Beacon Economics, John Husing) produce analysis in connection with their respective institutional missions. Readers should evaluate individual data points in the context of their original source, timeframe, and institutional perspective.

Scope

Geography: Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area (BLS designation, full two-county geography).

Workforce: All employees, with emphasis on production, trades, engineering, technical, administrative, and skilled occupational categories relevant to Amtec’s staffing focus.

Time period: Payroll employment series current through April 2026 preliminary BLS CES; labor force and unemployment series current through April 2026 preliminary BLS LAUS; OEWS all-occupation data reflect May 2025.

Primary Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Official U.S. government labor market data used for employment, wages, and labor force statistics throughout this report.

• Inland Empire Economy at a Glance (NAICS regional summary): https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ca_riverside_msa.htm
• Current Employment Statistics (CES): nonfarm employment levels and 12-month percent change by industry, April 2026 preliminary
• Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS): unemployment rate, labor force, and employment estimates, April 2026 preliminary
• Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 — Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA: https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm
• OEWS, May 2025 — Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA and national comparison tables: https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm
• Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW): establishment counts and average wages

California Employment Development Department (EDD)

State-level monthly Labor Market Information Division releases, county-level industry employment data, and California-specific occupational employment and wage data.

• Inland Empire MSA labor market data: https://labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/geography/msa/riverside-san-bernardino-ontario.html
• California EDD 10-year occupational projections (referenced for forward indicators)

Inland Empire Economic Partnership (IEEP)

Regional economic analysis and monthly employment commentary produced by IEEP in partnership with Claremont McKenna College’s Lowe Institute of Political Economy.

• IEEP February 2026 Employment Report (April 17, 2026): https://www.cmc.edu/sites/default/files/IEEP%20NEWS%20RELEASE%20April%2017%20Feb%2026%20data.pdf
• IEEP State of the Region 2026 (referenced for “House with a View Sitting on Three Stilts” framing)

Inland Economic Growth and Opportunity (IEGO)

Regional workforce and economic development organization producing monthly labor market briefs and California Jobs First initiative coordination.

• IEGO labor market commentary referenced via Community Forward Redlands, July 2025 and Inland Empire Community News, October 2025

Cal State San Bernardino Institute of Applied Research and Policy Analysis (IAR)

Monthly Inland Empire Purchasing Managers Index for the regional manufacturing sector, providing timely sentiment data for IE manufacturers.

• Inland Empire PMI commentary referenced via IE Business Daily and AmPac Business Capital regional analysis

Beacon Economics

Regional and California economic analysis providing comparative IE-versus-California-regions context.

• Beacon Economics commentary on IE labor force growth (2020-2025) referenced via CalMatters, May 2025

U.S. Census Bureau

Population, demographic, housing, and commute data via the American Community Survey.

• ACS 2024 1-year estimates referenced via Data USA – Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario

California Department of Finance (DOF)

County population estimates used for the January 2026 Riverside and San Bernardino county total.

• DOF E-1 city, county, and state population estimates: https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/estimates-e1/

California Association of Realtors (CAR)

Median home price data for the Inland Empire single-family housing market.

• CAR April 2026 sales and price report: https://www.car.org/aboutus/mediacenter/newsreleases/2026releases/april2026sales

CBRE Labor Analytics

Industrial real estate market analysis with workforce-relevant indicators including warehouse vacancy, industrial absorption, and tenant migration patterns.

• CBRE, Colliers, and Cushman & Wakefield Q1 2026 Inland Empire industrial reports tracking vacancy, absorption, leasing activity, and construction pipeline

John Husing / Economics & Politics, Inc.

Long-running Inland Empire economic analysis providing historical context and continuity across multiple cycles. Husing’s commentary referenced via regional trade press throughout the report.

UC Riverside School of Business / Center for Economic Forecasting and Development

University-based regional economic research with particular focus on the Inland Empire economy.

• UC Riverside warehouse and logistics workforce data referenced via CalMatters, May 2025

Additional References

• CalMatters – “Inland Empire lost trade and transportation jobs” (May 2025)
• Community Forward Redlands – “Warehouse and transportation jobs on the decline” (July 2025)
• AmPac Business Capital – “Inland Empire Small Business Outlook 2025” (November 2025)
• Inland Empire Community News – “State of the Inland Empire Economy” (October 2025)
• Commercial Property Executive – “Inland Empire Saw Strong Industrial Deals in 2025” (February 2026)