Table of Contents

This Los Angeles County workforce report was compiled in September 2026, with labor market series running through July 2026 (preliminary). “Los Angeles” throughout means the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division, which is exactly coextensive with Los Angeles County. Full sourcing, data vintages and limitations appear in Methodology and Sources at the end of this report.

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Executive Summary

~4.58 million Los Angeles County nonfarm payroll employment (BLS CES, July 2026 preliminary)

5.2% Los Angeles County unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted (BLS LAUS, July 2026)

−142,835 One-year decline in the Los Angeles County civilian labor force (BLS LAUS, July 2026)

Los Angeles County is the largest labor market in the western United States, and in mid-2026 it presents employers with a genuinely unusual picture: the number of jobs located in the county has fully recovered from the pandemic and now exceeds its 2019 level, while the number of county residents actually working has not recovered at all. Payroll employment stood at 4,579,600 in July 2026, up 37,900 jobs over the year and roughly 75,600 above July 2019. Over the same seven years the county’s civilian labor force fell by nearly 227,000 people and the number of employed residents fell by about 229,000. The county has more jobs and fewer workers than it did before the pandemic.

That divergence explains why the headline unemployment rate improved so sharply without signalling a stronger market. Los Angeles County unemployment fell from 6.2% in July 2025 to 5.2% in July 2026, a full percentage point. But the number of employed residents fell by 84,608 over those same twelve months. The rate improved because 142,835 people left the labor force, not because more of them found work. For an employer, a falling unemployment rate that is produced by a shrinking labor pool is a warning rather than a reassurance.

The composition of what growth there was is equally concentrated. Of the 37,900 payroll jobs the county added over the year, education and health services accounted for 38,800. Every other sector in Los Angeles County, taken together, lost about 900 jobs. Manufacturing fell 5,500 (1.8%), transportation, warehousing and utilities fell 5,300 (2.5%), government fell 5,200, financial activities fell 4,000, and information fell 2,900. Leisure and hospitality added 11,300 and other services added 6,100, but those gains were offset elsewhere. Education and health services did not merely lead growth in Los Angeles County; the supersector accounted for more than the whole of it, and health care and social assistance alone supplied roughly 84% of the countywide gain.

Los Angeles County’s healthcare workforce includes a very large low-wage support tier. Healthcare support occupations employ 438,910 people in Los Angeles County at an average of $19.67 an hour, and home health and personal care aides alone account for 326,640 of them at an average of $17.63. That single occupation is the largest in the county. Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations, the credentialed half of the sector, employ 252,570 at $61.86 an hour. Employers competing for entry-level and support staff are now competing against a very large, very fast-growing, and very low-paying occupational block.

The county’s signature industry continued to shrink. Motion picture and sound recording employment stood at 97,300 in July 2026, unchanged from a year earlier and down 33.1% from July 2022 and 39.6% below the industry’s February 2022 high of 161,100. The broader information sector is down roughly 30% from its February 2022 high, and roughly 26% from July 2022. Four years after the post-pandemic production surge, entertainment employment in Los Angeles has not partially recovered; it has settled onto a materially lower floor and stayed there. Producers and directors still earn an average of $79.96 an hour in the county and camera operators $54.66, but there are fewer of those jobs than at any point in the past decade outside 2020 and 2023.

Wages remain high and housing remains the binding constraint, though less punishingly than in Orange County. Los Angeles County workers averaged $38.20 an hour, above Orange County’s $37.40 and roughly 19% above the Inland Empire, and just below the California average of $38.79. The median single-family home sold for $888,120 in July 2026, down 2.6% over the year and almost exactly the statewide median. Seventeen percent of county households could afford that home in the second quarter of 2026, requiring a qualifying income of $219,200 against a median household income of $90,845. Los Angeles is the only large Southern California county where home prices are currently falling, which is a modest easing of a constraint that remains severe.

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Key Los Angeles Workforce Benchmarks at a Glance (2026)

Workforce Size

Total nonfarm payroll employment: 4,579,600 (July 2026, preliminary, BLS CES)
Civilian labor force: 4,937,408, down 2.8% year over year (BLS LAUS)
Employed residents: 4,679,684, down 1.8% year over year (BLS LAUS)
County population: 9,757,179 (2024, U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024)
Occupational employment base: 4,586,370 (May 2025, California EDD OEWS)

Labor Availability

Los Angeles County unemployment rate: 5.2% not seasonally adjusted (July 2026, BLS LAUS)
Unemployed county residents: 257,724, down from 315,951 a year earlier (BLS LAUS)
California: 5.3% not seasonally adjusted (BLS LAUS)
National: 4.4% not seasonally adjusted, 4.1% seasonally adjusted (BLS)
Orange County: 4.2% · Riverside County: 5.9% · San Bernardino County: 5.5% BLS LAUS

Wage Benchmarks

Average hourly wage, all Los Angeles County workers: $38.20 (May 2025 OEWS employment, wages updated to Q1 2026, California EDD OEWS)
Median hourly wage: $27.56; 25th percentile $19.26; 75th percentile $46.42 California EDD OEWS
Average annual wage: $79,446 California EDD OEWS
Orange County average wage: $37.40 (same EDD vintage, California EDD OEWS)
Inland Empire average wage: $32.03 (EDD) / $31.33 (BLS OEWS, May 2025, BLS OEWS)
California statewide: $38.79 · National: $33.54 BLS OEWS
Los Angeles premium to the national average: ~14%; to the Inland Empire: ~19%

Industry Composition

Office and administrative support: 514,620 workers, the county’s largest occupational group (California EDD OEWS)
Healthcare support: 438,910 workers at $19.67 average hourly (California EDD OEWS)
Food preparation and serving: 419,810 workers at $21.21 California EDD OEWS
Transportation and material moving: 369,190 workers at $27.91 California EDD OEWS
Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media: 154,190 workers at $58.38, a concentration no other U.S. county matches (California EDD OEWS)
Architecture and engineering: 61,390 workers at $60.40 California EDD OEWS

Sectoral Employment Trends (year over year, July 2025 to July 2026)

Education and health services: +3.9% (+38,800, BLS CES)
Other services: +3.8% (+6,100) · Leisure and hospitality: +2.1% (+11,300, BLS CES)
Retail trade: +0.6% · Wholesale trade: +0.4% · Construction: +0.2% · Professional and business services: +0.2% BLS CES
Trade, transportation and utilities: −0.3% · Government: −0.9% BLS CES
Information: −1.7% · Manufacturing: −1.8% · Financial activities: −2.0% · Transportation, warehousing and utilities: −2.5% BLS CES
Total nonfarm: +0.8% (+37,900), of which education and health services supplied 38,800

Demographics

Foreign-born share of population: 34.0%, the highest of the three Southern California regions (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2024)
Mean commute time: 31.7 minutes ACS 2024
Homeownership rate: 45.6%, against 56.4% in Orange County and 65.8% in the Inland Empire (ACS 2024)
Median household income: $90,845 ACS 2024
Median home value: $866,500 · Median age: 38.9 ACS 2024

Housing and Labor Force Context

Median existing single-family home price: $888,120, down 2.6% year over year (July 2026, California Association of Realtors)
Housing affordability: 17% of households can afford the median home (Q2 2026, C.A.R. Traditional Housing Affordability Index)
Minimum qualifying income: $219,200, roughly 2.4 times the county’s median household income (C.A.R.)
Labor force change since July 2019: −226,985 (−4.4%, BLS LAUS)
Payroll employment change since July 2019: +75,600 (+1.7%, BLS CES)
Los Angeles is the only large Southern California county where home prices fell over the past year

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1. Overview of the Los Angeles Workforce

~4.58 million Total nonfarm payroll employment in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division (July 2026, BLS CES, preliminary)

Los Angeles County held 4,579,600 nonfarm payroll jobs in July 2026, up 37,900 or 0.8% from a year earlier. The county is home to roughly 9.76 million residents across 88 incorporated cities and a large unincorporated area, making it the most populous county in the United States and, by a wide margin, the largest single labor market on the West Coast. Its payroll count alone exceeds the combined totals of Orange County (about 1.69 million) and the Inland Empire (about 1.71 million).

The sector distribution in July 2026 was led by education and health services at 1,027,700 jobs, followed by trade, transportation and utilities at 792,900, professional and business services at 653,900, government at 574,100, and leisure and hospitality at 547,000. Retail trade accounted for 392,200, manufacturing for 297,800, transportation, warehousing and utilities for 210,900, financial activities for 200,000, wholesale trade for 189,800, information for 171,200, other services for 164,700, and construction for 148,500. Education and health services alone now represent 22.4% of all payroll employment in the county.

Those levels describe jobs located in Los Angeles County. A second and equally important series describes county residents who hold jobs anywhere, and it tells a different story. The civilian labor force stood at 4,937,408 in July 2026, down 142,835 or 2.8% over the year. Employed residents numbered 4,679,684, down 84,608 or 1.8%. These two series come from different BLS surveys and are not contradictory: the establishment survey counts positions by place of work and therefore includes the very large number of people who commute into Los Angeles County, while the household survey counts employed people by place of residence. The gap between them is where the county’s workforce problem lives.

Measured against July 2019, the divergence is stark. Payroll employment is up roughly 75,600 jobs, a 1.7% gain, so the county’s job base has more than recovered from the pandemic. Over the same period the civilian labor force fell by 226,985 people, a 4.4% decline, and the number of employed residents fell by 229,016, a 4.7% decline. The July 2026 labor force is the smallest recorded in the eleven years of data reviewed for this report, lower even than the July 2020 reading taken at the depth of the pandemic shutdown.

For employers, the practical consequence is that Los Angeles County’s apparent scale overstates the pool actually available. There are more positions in the county than there were before the pandemic and fewer county residents working than at any point in over a decade. Commuting into the county from Orange County, the Inland Empire and Ventura County accounts for part of the difference, though the two surveys are not directly reconcilable: the establishment survey counts a multiple-jobholder once per employer, and the household survey includes the self-employed and agricultural workers that the establishment survey excludes. Hiring plans built on the assumption that a county of 9.76 million people offers effectively unlimited candidates have been running into that gap for three years.

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2. The Los Angeles Wage Picture: LA vs. Orange County vs. the Inland Empire vs. National

$38.20 Average hourly wage across all Los Angeles County occupations (California EDD OEWS, May 2025 employment with Q1 2026 wages)

Los Angeles County workers averaged $38.20 an hour across 4,586,370 occupational positions. That is the highest of the three Southern California regions Amtec covers, sitting above Orange County’s $37.40 and roughly 19% above the Inland Empire’s $32.03 on the same EDD basis. It is also close to the California statewide average of $38.79 and roughly 14% above the national average of $33.54 from the official BLS May 2025 OEWS release. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA, which combines Los Angeles and Orange counties and is the geography BLS publishes wages for, averaged $37.15.

The average conceals an unusually wide distribution. The county’s median hourly wage was $27.56, well below the $38.20 mean, and the 25th percentile sat at $19.26 against a 75th percentile of $46.42. A mean that exceeds the median by more than ten dollars an hour indicates a labor market with a large low-wage base and a high-earning tail, which is precisely what Los Angeles has. The average annual wage was $79,446.

Where Los Angeles pays a genuine premium, it does so in credentialed and creative work. Registered nurses averaged $69.50 an hour in the county against $48.76 nationally, a 43% premium. Producers and directors averaged $79.96 against $54.47 nationally, a 47% premium. Aerospace engineers earned $79.93 against $68.30, electrical engineers $73.17 against $60.15, software developers $80.94 against $71.20, and mechanical engineers $61.31 against $54.62. Skilled construction trades also carry a strong premium: carpenters averaged $39.37 against $31.55 nationally and electricians $40.57 against $34.37.

The premium does not extend to the factory floor. Machinists in Los Angeles County averaged $28.48 an hour against a national average of $28.52, which is to say no premium at all. Welders averaged $29.89 against $27.29 and inspectors, testers and sorters $28.99 against $25.70, both modest gaps that a candidate weighing a 14% higher cost of living will not find persuasive. Home health and personal care aides, the county’s largest occupation, averaged $17.63 against $17.36 nationally, a 2% difference. Production occupations as a group averaged $26.19 an hour in a county where the all-occupation average is $38.20.

For hiring managers, this is the wage structure to plan against. Los Angeles is an expensive market in which to recruit engineers, nurses, skilled trades and creative professionals, and a market offering very little wage advantage for production, warehouse and entry-level support roles. Employers filling the second category are competing on commute, schedule and stability rather than on pay, because the pay differential that would justify a Los Angeles commute largely does not exist at those levels.

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3. Housing Costs, Affordability, and the Hiring Reality

$888,120 Median Los Angeles County single-family home price, July 2026 (California Association of Realtors)

The median existing single-family home in Los Angeles County sold for $888,120 in July 2026, down 2.6% from a year earlier, with sales down 0.9%. That figure sits almost exactly at the California statewide median of $887,680 and well below Orange County’s $1,475,000. Riverside County’s median was $649,000 and San Bernardino County’s $488,280. Los Angeles is currently the only large Southern California county where prices are falling: Orange County rose 5.4% over the same year, Riverside 3.0%, and San Bernardino 0.4%.

Affordability remains severe despite the price decline. The California Association of Realtors put Los Angeles County’s Traditional Housing Affordability Index at 17% for the second quarter of 2026, meaning roughly one household in six could afford the median-priced home. The minimum qualifying income was $219,200, against a county median household income of $90,845 from the 2024 American Community Survey. A household would need roughly 2.4 times the county’s median income to buy the county’s median house. Orange County is worse at 15% and a $370,000 qualifying income, while Riverside County stands at 28% and San Bernardino at 34%.

The homeownership consequence is visible in the Census data. Only 45.6% of occupied housing units in Los Angeles County are owner-occupied, against 56.4% in Orange County and 65.8% in the Inland Empire. Los Angeles is a majority-renter county, and it is the only one of the three in that position. Median home value across all owner-occupied units was $866,500 and the mean commute was 31.7 minutes, shorter than the Inland Empire’s 33.2 minutes because more Los Angeles residents both live and work inside the county.

The price decline should not be read as relief arriving. A 2.6% drop against a qualifying income of $219,200 changes very little for a candidate earning the county median. What it does change is the direction of the pressure, and it arrives at the same moment that Orange County prices rose 5.4%. The relative cost of living in Los Angeles versus Orange County narrowed over the past year for the first time in several, which matters for employers on either side of that county line who compete for the same engineers and clinicians.

For hiring managers, housing is the mechanism connecting a strong wage market to a shrinking labor force. A county that pays 14% above the national average while requiring 2.4 times median income to buy a median home will export workers over time, and the labor force data show that is exactly what has happened. Compensation bands built only against local wage benchmarks, without reference to what those wages purchase, will keep losing candidates to Riverside, San Bernardino, and out of state.

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4. Hiring Pressure and Labor Availability

5.2% Los Angeles County unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted, July 2026 (BLS LAUS)

Los Angeles County’s unemployment rate was 5.2% in July 2026, down a full percentage point from 6.2% a year earlier. The county sits just below California’s 5.3% and above the national rate of 4.4% on the same not-seasonally-adjusted basis. Among neighbouring counties, Orange County was tightest at 4.2%, San Bernardino stood at 5.5% and Riverside at 5.9%. Los Angeles occupies the middle of the Southern California range, looser than Orange County and tighter than the Inland Empire.

The composition of that one-point improvement is what employers should read carefully. Unemployed residents fell from 315,951 to 257,724, a decline of 58,227. Over the same twelve months, employed residents fell by 84,608 and the labor force fell by 142,835. More people left the labor force than found work, by a wide margin. An unemployment rate can fall for two very different reasons, and in Los Angeles County over the past year it fell for the less encouraging one.

On the payroll side, the year produced 37,900 additional jobs, a 0.8% gain. Education and health services contributed 38,800 of them. Leisure and hospitality added 11,300 and other services 6,100, while retail trade, wholesale trade, construction and professional and business services each moved less than a percentage point. Against those gains, manufacturing lost 5,500 jobs, transportation, warehousing and utilities 5,300, government 5,200, financial activities 4,000 and information 2,900. Netting education and health services out of the total leaves the county roughly 900 jobs down over the year.

Two structural facts shape availability beyond the monthly numbers. Los Angeles County is 34.0% foreign-born, the highest share of the three Southern California regions and well above Orange County’s 30.3% and the Inland Empire’s 21.8%, so immigration policy and enforcement have a more direct effect on labor supply here than anywhere else in the region. And the county is a majority-renter market with a median age of 38.9, a combination that plausibly leaves residents more able to relocate in response to cost pressure than owner-heavy Orange County or the Inland Empire.

For hiring managers, the operative reading is that Los Angeles County is not a slack market despite a 5.2% unemployment rate. The rate reflects a labor force that shrank faster than employment did. Requisitions in healthcare, skilled trades and engineering are competing inside a pool that has contracted by nearly 227,000 people since 2019, and the candidates who remain have more geographic options than the headline number suggests.

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5. The Compositional Story: One Supersector Carries All Net Growth

+38,800 Year-over-year change in Los Angeles County education and health services employment, against a total county gain of 37,900 (BLS CES, July 2026)

Education and health services employment in Los Angeles County rose from 988,900 in July 2025 to 1,027,700 in July 2026, a gain of 38,800 jobs or 3.9%. Total nonfarm employment across the entire county rose by 37,900 over the same period. The sector therefore accounted for more than the whole of the county’s net job growth, and every other industry combined subtracted roughly 900 positions. Health care and social assistance, the larger component within that sector, employed 887,700 people in July 2026, up 31,800 or 3.7% over the year.

This is a degree of concentration worth stating plainly. In the Inland Empire, three sectors account for more than half of employment, a structure its own report describes as a house on three stilts. In Los Angeles County the dependency is narrower still at the margin: one supersector is producing all of the growth, and health care and social assistance supplies roughly 84% of it. If education and health services hiring slows, the county’s payroll count stops rising, because nothing else is currently adding.

The occupational structure of the county’s healthcare workforce matters more to employers than the headline. OEWS is a point-in-time count rather than a time series, so it describes the shape of the existing workforce rather than where the past year’s gain landed. Healthcare support occupations employ 438,910 people in Los Angeles County at an average of $19.67 an hour, or $40,901 a year. Home health and personal care aides account for 326,640 of those positions at an average of $17.63 an hour and $36,659 a year, making that single occupation the largest in the county by a wide margin. California EDD notes in its own file that wages in this dataset were rounded up to $16.50 hourly and $34,320 annually to reflect state minimum wage law, which indicates how much of this occupation sits at the statutory floor.

The credentialed half of the sector looks entirely different. Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations employ 252,570 at an average of $61.86 an hour and $128,673 a year. Registered nurses account for 84,370 positions at $69.50 an hour and $144,566 a year, a 43% premium over the national average for the occupation and one of the largest wage premiums among major occupations in the county. Nurse practitioners averaged $81.96 an hour and $170,486 a year across 7,030 positions. Nursing assistants at 34,360 positions averaged $24.62 and medical assistants at 27,850 averaged $25.98.

Los Angeles County healthcare is therefore bimodal: a very large low-wage support base and a smaller credentialed tier commanding the county’s steepest premiums. Both halves compete directly with other employers. The support tier draws from the same candidate pool as warehousing, retail, food service and light production. The credentialed tier is constrained by licensure and clinical training capacity rather than by wage.

Leisure and hospitality was the county’s only other meaningful source of growth, adding 11,300 jobs or 2.1% to reach 547,000 in July 2026. Food preparation and serving occupations employ 419,810 people at an average of $21.21 an hour, making that the third-largest occupational group in the county after office and administrative support and healthcare support. Retail trade added 2,200 jobs and other services 6,100. Taken together with healthcare, these are the sectors absorbing much of Los Angeles County’s entry-level labor, with healthcare support averaging $19.67 an hour and food preparation and serving $21.21. Together, healthcare support, food service and administrative support account for roughly 1.4 million positions, creating a large competing labor pool across the county’s lower- and mid-wage workforce.

The education half of education and health services should not be read as the growth driver. Health care and social assistance alone accounted for 887,700 of the sector’s 1,027,700 positions and contributed 31,800 of the 38,800 job gain. Educational services supplied the remainder, and public education employment sits partly inside the government category, which contracted 5,200 jobs over the year. The growth in this sector is overwhelmingly clinical and social-service work rather than teaching.

For hiring managers outside healthcare, the practical effect is that the county’s dominant growth sector is absorbing labor at scale. An employer posting a $19 an hour production or warehouse role in Los Angeles County is competing with a healthcare support occupational base of 438,910 positions paying $19.67 an hour on average, while the broader health care and social assistance industry added 31,800 jobs over the past year. Five of the county’s ten major sectors grew over the year, but education and health services accounted for more than the entire net gain.

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6. Entertainment: A Structural Contraction, Not a Downturn

−33.1% Change in Los Angeles County motion picture and sound recording employment since July 2022, and 39.6% below the February 2022 high (BLS CES, July 2026)

Motion picture and sound recording employment in Los Angeles County stood at 97,300 in July 2026, identical to the 97,300 recorded in July 2025 and down from 145,500 in July 2022, a decline of 48,200 jobs or 33.1%. Measured against the industry’s actual high of 161,100 in February 2022, employment is down 63,800 jobs or 39.6%. The broader information sector, which contains it, fell from 231,300 in July 2022 to 171,200 in July 2026, a 26% decline, and was down 1.7% over the past year alone.

The shape of the series is what distinguishes this from an ordinary cycle. Employment ran between 119,000 and 143,000 through the second half of the 2010s, collapsed to 82,300 in July 2020, rebounded during the streaming-driven production surge of 2022, peaking at 161,100 in February of that year and standing at 145,500 by July, then fell to 94,200 in 2023 during the writers’ and actors’ strikes. It recovered only partially to 103,000 in 2024 before settling at 97,300 in both 2025 and 2026. Four years past the peak and three years past the strikes, the series has stopped moving. It has not resumed a recovery; it has established a floor roughly a third below where it was.

Wages in the sector remain high for those still employed in it. Producers and directors averaged $79.96 an hour and $166,314 a year across 20,500 county positions, a 47% premium over the national average for the occupation and the largest such premium Amtec found outside registered nursing. Camera operators averaged $54.66 across 3,460 positions and film and video editors $48.96 across 5,740. Audio and video technicians averaged $38.06 across 3,960 positions. Actors, at 24,070 positions and $86.19 an hour, carry an EDD footnote stating that annual figures cannot be calculated because engagements commonly run a day or a week and rarely exceed three to six months.

The arts, design, entertainment, sports and media group as a whole employs 154,190 people in Los Angeles County at an average of $58.38 an hour. No other county in the United States carries a comparable concentration of this work, and that concentration is precisely why the contraction registers at the county level rather than washing out. A third of a signature industry does not disappear from a regional labor market without leaving a large pool of experienced, well-paid, geographically anchored people looking for adjacent work.

The contraction is also visible in the information sector’s wider composition. Information employment fell to 171,200 in July 2026 from 174,100 a year earlier and from 231,300 in July 2022, a decline of roughly 60,100 positions, and 30.1% below its February 2022 high of 244,900. Motion picture and sound recording accounts for 97,300 of what remains, meaning the industry still represents well over half of the county’s information sector. No other large U.S. county has an information sector shaped this way, and it is why national technology-sector trends map poorly onto Los Angeles County employment data.

For hiring managers, that pool is the opportunity in this section. Production coordination, scheduling, logistics, set fabrication, audio and video engineering, and post-production project management all transfer into manufacturing operations, facilities, events, corporate communications and technical support roles. Employers in Los Angeles County have access to a cohort of candidates with genuine project delivery experience under deadline pressure who are, for the first time in a generation, available in volume.

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7. Manufacturing Workforce in Los Angeles County

297,800 Los Angeles County manufacturing employment, July 2026 (BLS CES, preliminary)

Manufacturing employment in Los Angeles County was 297,800 in July 2026, down 5,500 jobs or 1.8% from a year earlier. That remains the largest manufacturing workforce of any county in the United States, roughly double Orange County’s 147,800 and more than three times the Inland Empire’s 92,800. Manufacturing represents 6.5% of county payroll employment, below the roughly 8% national share.

The decline was concentrated entirely in nondurable goods. Durable goods manufacturing employed 182,800 in July 2026, up 800 jobs or 0.4% over the year. Nondurable goods manufacturing employed 115,000, down 6,300 or 5.2%. Los Angeles County’s nondurable base includes apparel, food processing, printing and chemicals, and it has been contracting for years under cost and offshoring pressure. The durable side, which includes aerospace, fabricated metals, machinery and electronics, was essentially flat. An employer reading only the headline 1.8% decline would miss that the county’s advanced manufacturing base held steady while its consumer-goods base did not.

Production occupation wages in Los Angeles County sit close to national levels despite the county’s overall wage premium. Machinists averaged $28.48 an hour across 4,870 positions, against a national average of $28.52, effectively no difference. Welders, cutters, solderers and brazers averaged $29.89 across 5,380 positions against $27.29 nationally. Inspectors, testers, sorters and samplers averaged $28.99 across 14,420 positions against $25.70. Industrial machinery mechanics averaged $37.12 across 5,980 positions, and tool and die makers $38.45 across 630.

Supervisory and management roles carry more of a premium. First-line supervisors of production and operating workers averaged $39.14 an hour across 12,480 positions, and industrial production managers averaged $67.73 an hour and $140,864 a year across 6,240. The production major group as a whole employs 193,270 people at an average of $26.19 an hour, roughly two-thirds of the county’s all-occupation average of $38.20.

For hiring managers, Los Angeles County manufacturing presents a specific difficulty: the county’s cost of living carries a 14% wage premium in aggregate, but production wages do not. A machinist earns the national average in a county where the median home costs $888,120 and 17% of households can afford it. That gap is a substantial part of why production roles in Los Angeles County can take longer to fill than their wage bands would suggest, and why employers increasingly recruit from the Inland Empire despite the commute.

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

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8. Engineering and Technical Workforce in Los Angeles County

61,390 Architecture and engineering employment in Los Angeles County (California EDD OEWS, May 2025)

Los Angeles County employs 61,390 people in architecture and engineering occupations at an average of $60.40 an hour and $125,636 a year, plus a further 123,220 in computer and mathematical occupations at $63.97 an hour and $133,062 a year. Together these two groups account for roughly 184,600 technical positions, the largest such concentration in California outside the Bay Area.

Engineering wages in the county run well above national levels across every discipline Amtec tracks. Aerospace engineers averaged $79.93 an hour and $166,242 a year across 3,610 positions, a 17% premium over the national average. Electrical engineers averaged $73.17 across 6,080 positions, a 22% premium and the widest of any engineering discipline in the county. Electronics engineers excluding computer averaged $72.52 across 2,930 positions, mechanical engineers $61.31 across 5,600, industrial engineers $59.99 across 7,610, and civil engineers $60.68 across 10,300. Software developers, the largest single technical occupation at 37,640 positions, averaged $80.94 an hour and $168,374 a year.

Technician-level roles are thinner than the engineering ranks and command smaller premiums. Electrical and electronic engineering technologists and technicians numbered 1,900 at an average of $41.61 an hour, and mechanical engineering technologists and technicians 830 at $42.95. Those two occupations together total fewer than 2,800 positions in a county of 9.76 million people, which makes technician requisitions structurally harder to fill than engineer requisitions despite the lower wage band.

The county’s technical workforce is distributed across a wider set of industries than either sibling region’s. Aerospace and defense concentrate in the South Bay and Long Beach, entertainment technology across the Westside and Burbank, logistics and transportation engineering around the ports, and civil engineering across the county’s public infrastructure programs. That breadth means a Los Angeles engineering candidate can pursue several unrelated industries at once, which in Amtec’s recruiting experience compresses the time an employer has to move on a strong candidate.

For hiring managers, speed of process tends to matter as much as wage in Los Angeles engineering. A 17% to 22% premium over national benchmarks is already priced into the market, and candidates know it. The differentiators are interview cycle length, clarity of scope, and whether a role is genuinely on-site, hybrid, or remote in a county where a cross-town commute can exceed an hour in each direction.

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9. Construction and Skilled Trades

148,500 Los Angeles County construction employment, July 2026 (BLS CES, preliminary)

Construction employment in Los Angeles County was 148,500 in July 2026, up 300 jobs or 0.2% over the year. That stability is notable against its neighbours: the Inland Empire’s construction employment fell 5.4% and Orange County’s 1.3% over the same twelve months. Los Angeles County construction has neither the residential boom that drove Inland Empire growth nor the sharp pullback that followed it, and its mix is weighted toward institutional, infrastructure and commercial work that moves on longer cycles than housing starts.

Construction and extraction occupations employ 116,310 people in the county at an average of $37.94 an hour and $78,924 a year, well above the national construction and extraction average of $31.42. The premium is consistent across the trades. Electricians averaged $40.57 an hour across 12,930 positions against $34.37 nationally, an 18% premium. Carpenters averaged $39.37 across 20,010 positions against $31.55, a 25% premium and the largest trade gap in the county. Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters averaged $38.82 across 10,080 positions, and heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics $36.09 across 6,210.

At the entry level the picture inverts. Construction laborers in Los Angeles County averaged $31.15 an hour across 13,150 positions, against $31.53 in the Inland Empire. A construction laborer earns marginally more in Riverside or San Bernardino than in Los Angeles, in a market where the median home costs $649,000 or $488,280 rather than $888,120. That is a straightforward reason for entry-level trades labor to concentrate inland, and employers staffing Los Angeles County jobsites at that level are recruiting against it directly.

Supervisory trades roles carry the county’s strongest construction premiums. First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers averaged $50.04 an hour across 11,660 positions, and construction managers $67.71 an hour and $140,837 a year across 6,050. Installation, maintenance and repair occupations, a category that overlaps facilities and industrial work, employ 123,270 people at $35.22 an hour.

For hiring managers, Los Angeles County trades hiring divides cleanly at the journeyman line. Licensed and supervisory trades command real premiums and are worth paying for locally. Entry-level and helper roles carry no wage advantage over the Inland Empire at all, and employers filling them should expect to compete on jobsite location, schedule reliability, and advancement path rather than on rate.

Related: Read Amtec’s State of the U.S. Construction Workforce for national context on the trades pipeline shaping Los Angeles County hiring.

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10. Aerospace, Defense, and Advanced Manufacturing

182,800 Los Angeles County durable goods manufacturing employment, essentially unchanged over the year (BLS CES, July 2026)

Durable goods manufacturing in Los Angeles County employed 182,800 people in July 2026, up 800 jobs over the year while the nondurable side fell 6,300. That stability sits underneath the headline manufacturing decline and is the part of the county’s industrial base most relevant to aerospace and defense employers. The South Bay corridor through El Segundo, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach and Torrance, together with the Long Beach aerospace cluster, remains one of the densest concentrations of aerospace engineering and production in the country.

Wage benchmarks for the cluster are the highest in the county’s technical ranks. Aerospace engineers averaged $79.93 an hour and $166,242 a year across 3,610 county positions, a 17% premium over the national average for the occupation. Electrical engineers at $73.17 and electronics engineers at $72.52 carry premiums of 22% and 12% respectively. On the production side, industrial machinery mechanics averaged $37.12, inspectors and testers $28.99, and first-line production supervisors $39.14.

The constraint in this segment is national rather than local. Industry analysis cited in Amtec’s aerospace and defense reporting puts unfilled cleared positions at more than 70,000 nationally with attrition near 15%, more than double the cross-industry average, and security clearance processing commonly runs six to eighteen months. A cleared candidate in Los Angeles County can move between the South Bay primes, the Long Beach cluster, and Orange County’s advanced-industry employers without relocating, which gives clearance holders unusual bargaining power and makes counteroffers routine.

For hiring managers, the practical implication is that aerospace and defense requisitions in Los Angeles County are won on clearance status and cycle time rather than on wage. The county already pays a 17% to 22% premium for the relevant engineering disciplines. Where a role does not require clearance, the entertainment contraction described in Section 6 has released technically capable candidates with fabrication, systems and project delivery experience who convert well into advanced manufacturing environments.

Related: Read Amtec’s State of the U.S. Aerospace & Defense Workforce for national context on clearance timelines and attrition.

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11. Office, Admin, Financial Services, and the Professional Workforce

514,620 Office and administrative support employment in Los Angeles County, the county’s largest occupational group (California EDD OEWS, May 2025)

Office and administrative support is the largest occupational group in Los Angeles County at 514,620 positions, averaging $28.70 an hour and $59,713 a year. Business and financial operations occupations add a further 309,980 positions at $50.31 an hour and $104,637 a year, and management occupations 316,290 at $78.62 and $163,517. On the industry side, professional and business services employed 653,900 in July 2026, up 0.2% over the year, while financial activities employed 200,000, down 4,000 or 2.0%.

Within the administrative ranks, wage levels vary by more than a factor of two. Office clerks, the largest single administrative occupation at 84,930 positions, averaged $25.18 an hour against $22.32 nationally. Customer service representatives at 45,680 positions averaged $26.21, secretaries and administrative assistants at 44,350 averaged $27.80, and bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks at 38,170 averaged $29.38. Accountants and auditors, at 50,230 positions, averaged $48.59 an hour and $101,079 a year.

Senior and specialist administrative roles carry stronger premiums. Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants averaged $42.91 an hour across 15,270 positions, human resources specialists $44.11 across 26,170, and first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers $40.29 across 39,200. The gap between a general office clerk at $25.18 and an executive assistant at $42.91 is wider in Los Angeles than in either sibling region, reflecting the concentration of corporate headquarters, entertainment business affairs, legal and financial services in the county.

The financial activities decline of 2.0% is the third consecutive area of contraction in the county’s white-collar base, alongside information at 1.7% and professional and business services running essentially flat. None of these are collapses, but together they mean the county’s office-based employment is not growing while education and health services added nearly 39,000 jobs over the past year.

Government is the fourth-largest employer in Los Angeles County at 574,100 positions, and it contracted by 5,200 jobs or 0.9% over the year. That is a smaller proportional decline than Orange County recorded in its most recent reading, but it removes a source of stable, benefited, mid-wage employment that has historically absorbed administrative and technical workers priced out of the private market. Los Angeles County government employment spans county and city agencies, the public school systems, community colleges, public health, and transit, and it competes directly with private employers for exactly the administrative and skilled-trades profiles covered in this section and in Section 9.

For hiring managers, administrative roles in Los Angeles County are the clearest case of a wage that does not clear the cost of living. An office clerk earning $52,371 a year faces a median home price of $888,120 and a rental market priced accordingly. Employers filling these roles should expect candidates to weigh commute and hybrid flexibility heavily, and should expect to lose candidates to employers closer to where those candidates can afford to live.

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12. Local Economic Sentiment and the Los Angeles Forward Indicators

2.9 million TEUs Port of Los Angeles container volume across June, July and August 2026, the strongest consecutive three-month period on record (FreightWaves, September 2026)

The Port of Los Angeles moved more than 2.9 million twenty-foot equivalent units across June, July and August 2026, its strongest three consecutive months on record. Through the first eight months of the year the port handled just over 7 million TEUs, up 1.5% on 2025 and running roughly 5% ahead of its five-year average pace. By the standard measure of Southern California trade activity, 2026 has been a strong year.

Employment in the sector that moves those containers went the other way. Transportation, warehousing and utilities employment in Los Angeles County fell 5,300 jobs or 2.5% over the year to 210,900, the steepest percentage decline of any major sector in the county. Trade, transportation and utilities as a whole fell 0.3%. Record cargo volumes and falling logistics employment in the same twelve months point to rising throughput per worker rather than weakening demand. The employment category covers transportation, warehousing and utilities well beyond the port itself, so these two series do not isolate a cause, and automation, process change and shifts in the mix of cargo and inland distribution could each contribute.

The same divergence appears, differently shaped, in entertainment. Motion picture employment has been flat at 97,300 for two consecutive Julys after falling roughly a third from July 2022. A series that stops declining is often read as stabilising, and in one sense it has, but it has stabilised at a level that supports roughly 48,000 fewer jobs than four years ago. Neither the strike recovery nor the production pipeline has moved that floor in three years.

Against those two, education and health services expanded 3.9% over the year and accounted for more than the whole of the county’s net job growth. Health care and social assistance, its largest component, grew 3.7% and supplied roughly 84% of the countywide gain. The forward question for Los Angeles County is not whether healthcare will keep growing, since demographic demand and an aging population make that likely, but whether anything else will resume growing alongside it. On the evidence of the past twelve months, manufacturing, logistics, government, finance and information were all contracting simultaneously.

For hiring managers, the forward indicators point in different directions depending on sector, and the county-level aggregates conceal that. Goods movement is busy but shedding headcount. Entertainment is stable at a much lower level. Education and health services is the one large sector where employment is clearly rising. Workforce planning built on the county’s total payroll trend will mislead in any one of those three.

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13. Future Workforce Outlook (2026 and Beyond)

−226,985 Change in the Los Angeles County civilian labor force since July 2019 (BLS LAUS)

The defining feature of the Los Angeles County labor market going into 2027 is that its resident labor force has shrunk substantially even as its payroll job base has grown. The civilian labor force has fallen by 226,985 people since July 2019, a 4.4% decline, while payroll employment has risen 75,600. The July 2026 labor force reading of 4,937,408 is the lowest in the eleven years reviewed for this report, below even the July 2020 pandemic trough. Nothing in the past three years of data suggests that trend reversing on its own.

Three forces sustain it. Housing costs require 2.4 times the county median household income to buy the county median home, and the county is 45.6% owner-occupied, meaning most residents hold no equity position anchoring them in place. The county is 34.0% foreign-born, the highest share in Southern California, which makes its labor supply more sensitive to immigration policy than Orange County or the Inland Empire. And the median age of 38.9 sits in the range where household formation decisions and relocation decisions are made.

The concentration risk compounds this. Education and health services now account for 22.4% of county payroll employment and supplied more than 100% of net job growth over the past year. Manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, government, financial activities and information all contracted simultaneously. A county whose growth rests on one sector while five others decline has less resilience than its scale implies, and healthcare includes a very large support workforce averaging $17.63 to $19.67 an hour.

There are genuine offsets. Los Angeles County retains the largest manufacturing workforce of any U.S. county at 297,800, the densest entertainment and media occupational concentration in the country at 154,190 positions, roughly 184,600 engineering and computing positions, and a port complex running at record volume. Construction employment is stable where both neighbouring regions are contracting. Home prices fell 2.6% over the year, the only large Southern California county where they did, which marginally eases the constraint that has driven residents out.

For hiring managers, the planning assumption for the next several years should be that Los Angeles County offers deep specialised talent and a shrinking general labor pool. Requisitions requiring credentials, clearances or trade licences will find candidates at a real but payable premium. Requisitions at entry level will compete against a healthcare support sector of 438,910 positions and against inland markets offering equivalent pay against median home prices 27% to 45% lower. Employers who plan around both facts at once will do better than those who read the county’s 9.76 million residents as a proxy for available labor.

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What This Means for Los Angeles Hiring Managers

Read the 5.2% unemployment rate as a supply signal, not a slack signal. It fell a full point over the year because 142,835 people left the labor force while employment fell by 84,608. Plan requisitions against a pool that is contracting, not one that is loosening.

Separate the two employment series before setting targets. Payroll employment counts jobs located in the county and is up 75,600 since 2019. Employed residents are down 229,016 over the same period. In-commuting accounts for part of that divergence, although the two series cannot be directly reconciled because they measure different things. Either way your candidate radius extends well beyond county lines, and so does your competition.

Do not assume the county’s 14% aggregate wage premium applies to your roles. It holds for nurses, engineers, licensed trades and creative professionals. It does not hold for machinists, who earn the national average here, nor for home health aides, warehouse labor, or entry-level construction, where the Inland Empire pays as much or more.

Treat healthcare support as a direct competitor for entry-level staff regardless of your industry. It is 438,910 positions averaging $19.67 an hour and growing faster than any other block in the county. Any role posted near that rate is competing with it.

Recruit actively from the entertainment contraction. Motion picture employment is down 48,200 jobs from July 2022 and 63,800 from the February 2022 high and has not recovered in three years. Those candidates carry deadline-driven project delivery, fabrication, logistics and technical operations experience, and many are already established in the county.

Move faster on engineering and cleared candidates than you would in a smaller market. A Los Angeles engineer can hold offers from aerospace, entertainment technology, logistics and civil infrastructure simultaneously without relocating. In Amtec’s recruiting experience, slow interview cycles can cost employers strong engineering candidates even when compensation is competitive.

Price the commute explicitly for production and administrative roles. A construction laborer earns marginally more in the Inland Empire than in Los Angeles County, against a median home price of $649,000 rather than $888,120. If the role cannot pay a differential, schedule reliability and jobsite location have to carry the offer.

Watch the durable and nondurable split rather than the manufacturing headline. Durable goods added 800 jobs over the year while nondurable shed 6,300. Advanced manufacturing in Los Angeles County is stable; consumer-goods manufacturing is not.

Expect logistics headcount to keep decoupling from cargo volume. The port complex ran its strongest summer on record while transportation and warehousing employment fell 2.5%. Volume growth is no longer a reliable predictor of hiring in Southern California goods movement.

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Key Takeaways for Los Angeles Hiring Managers

• Los Angeles County has more jobs and fewer workers than before the pandemic: payroll employment is up 75,600 since July 2019 while the civilian labor force is down 226,985 and employed residents are down 229,016.
• The unemployment rate fell from 6.2% to 5.2% over the year, but employed residents fell by 84,608. The improvement came from 142,835 people leaving the labor force, not from job finding.
• Education and health services added 38,800 jobs against a total county gain of 37,900. Every other sector combined lost about 900 positions.
• Los Angeles County healthcare carries a large low-wage support tier: healthcare support occupations employ 438,910 workers at $19.67 an hour, including 326,640 home health and personal care aides averaging $17.63, the county’s largest single occupation.
• Motion picture and sound recording employment is 97,300, flat year over year and down 33.1% from July 2022 and 39.6% below the industry’s February 2022 high of 161,100. Entertainment has established a new floor rather than recovering.
• County workers average $38.20 an hour, above Orange County’s $37.40, roughly 19% above the Inland Empire and 14% above the national average, but the median is $27.56, indicating a very wide distribution.
• The wage premium does not reach production work. Machinists average $28.48 in Los Angeles County against $28.52 nationally, and construction laborers earn slightly less here than in the Inland Empire.
• Manufacturing fell 1.8% to 297,800, but the decline was entirely nondurable goods, down 5.2%, while durable goods rose 0.4% to 182,800.
• The median home sold for $888,120 in July 2026, down 2.6%, the only large Southern California county with falling prices. Affordability remains at 17%, requiring $219,200 against a median household income of $90,845.
• The Port of Los Angeles ran its strongest three months on record over the summer while transportation, warehousing and utilities employment fell 2.5%, the county’s steepest sector decline.

Related:

• Amtec’s State of the Orange County Workforce Report
• Amtec’s State of the Inland Empire Workforce Report
• 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 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 Los Angeles County workforce as of mid-2026.

The report was compiled in September 2026 using the most current data available at the time. Employment, labor force, and unemployment series are current through July 2026 (preliminary), the most recent reference month published for metropolitan areas at the time of compilation. Occupational employment and wage figures reflect California EDD’s OEWS file for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division: May 2025 employment estimates with wages updated to the first quarter of 2026 via the Employment Cost Index, published June 2026. Comparative wage figures for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA, the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA, and the nation are official BLS OEWS May 2025 data. Demographic data reflect the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates. Housing data reflect California Association of Realtors July 2026 sales and second-quarter 2026 affordability reports.

Limitations

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

BLS and EDD employment data are subject to ongoing revision. July 2026 figures are preliminary and will be revised in subsequent releases and again at the next annual benchmark. Where headline figures are central to a hiring or planning decision, readers should verify against the most current BLS or EDD release before citing.

Industry employment figures in this report are not seasonally adjusted. BLS publishes seasonally adjusted estimates for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division only at the total-nonfarm level, so sector detail is available on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis alone. All year-over-year comparisons in this report are therefore July-to-July, which controls for seasonality by construction. County and state unemployment rates cited here are likewise not seasonally adjusted; where the national rate is compared to them, the not-seasonally-adjusted national figure of 4.4% is used rather than the more widely quoted seasonally adjusted 4.1%. The two bases are not interchangeable and should not be mixed.

Two different BLS surveys are cited throughout and they measure different things. The Current Employment Statistics program counts payroll jobs by place of work, and therefore counts positions held by people who commute into Los Angeles County from elsewhere. The Local Area Unemployment Statistics program counts employed people by place of residence, and therefore counts county residents working anywhere. The divergence between them described in Sections 1, 4 and 13 is a real feature of the Los Angeles labor market, not a discrepancy between sources.

BLS no longer publishes Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for metropolitan divisions within the 11 largest metropolitan areas, including the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale MD. Los Angeles County-specific occupational wage figures in this report therefore come from California EDD’s OEWS program. EDD produces these estimates by applying the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Cost Index to May 2025 OEWS wages, and they have not been validated by BLS. EDD further notes that wages in the file were rounded up to $16.50 hourly and $34,320 annually to reflect California minimum wage law, which affects the lowest-paid occupations, including home health and personal care aides. Comparisons between EDD county figures and BLS national or MSA figures are therefore comparisons across two related but distinct estimation processes.

Wage comparisons in this report are hourly means unless stated otherwise. Where an occupation is compared to a national benchmark, both figures are hourly means from the same OEWS vintage. Mean and median figures are reported separately where both are given and should not be compared to one another; the gap between the county’s $38.20 mean and $27.56 median is itself a finding rather than an inconsistency.

Compensation figures reflect occupational means, medians, and percentiles and do not capture role-specific premiums for skill, certification, security clearance, or industry experience. Occupational-share comparisons to the national distribution are Amtec calculations from the EDD and BLS files, not published location quotients.

Some sources cited in this report 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: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA Metropolitan Division (BLS designation), exactly coextensive with Los Angeles County, California; part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim Metropolitan Statistical Area, which also contains Orange County.

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

Time period: Most series current through July 2026 (BLS, preliminary). OEWS data reflect May 2025 employment with first-quarter 2026 wage updates. Demographic data reflect the 2024 American Community Survey. Housing data reflect July 2026 sales and second-quarter 2026 affordability.

Primary Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Current Employment Statistics and Local Area Unemployment Statistics for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division and Los Angeles County, July 2026 preliminary. Used for all payroll employment levels, sector detail, labor force, employment and unemployment figures throughout the report. Series accessed through the BLS Public Data API.

• https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ca_losangeles_md.htm
• https://www.bls.gov/sae/
• https://www.bls.gov/lau/

California Employment Development Department

Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale Metropolitan Division, May 2025 employment estimates with wages updated to the first quarter of 2026, published June 2026. Used for every Los Angeles County occupational employment count and wage figure in Sections 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 and in the benchmarks section.

• https://labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/data/oes-employment-and-wages.html
• https://labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/geography/losangeles-county.html

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics

May 2025 national and metropolitan-area estimates. Used for every national wage benchmark and for Inland Empire and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim MSA comparisons.

• https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.htm
• https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm

U.S. Census Bureau

American Community Survey 2024 1-year estimates for Los Angeles County. Used for population, median household income, median home value, homeownership rate, foreign-born share, mean commute time, and median age.

• https://data.census.gov/
• https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs

California Association of Realtors

July 2026 home sales and price report, and the Traditional Housing Affordability Index for the second quarter of 2026. Used for all median home price, price change, affordability index and qualifying income figures in Section 3 and the benchmarks section.

• https://www.car.org/aboutus/mediacenter/newsreleases/2026releases/July2026HomeSales
• https://www.car.org/marketdata/data/haitraditional

Port of Los Angeles

Container volume statistics for 2026. Used in Section 12 for the record summer volume and year-to-date figures.

• https://portoflosangeles.org/business/statistics/container-statistics

Additional References

• FreightWaves, “Port of Los Angeles posts record 2.9M TEUs, eyes strong finish to 2026” (September 2026)
• BLS Western Information Office, Occupational Employment and Wages in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (May 2025)
• BLS Western Information Office, Occupational Employment and Wages in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (May 2025)
• California Association of Realtors, Data and Statistics