Factsheet on the Los Angeles Economy

Population
With four million residents, Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States. The median household income is $44,445, with 19% of residents living below the poverty line.

Education
According to the Census Bureau, in 2006, 73 percent of people 25 years and over had at least graduated from high school and 29 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher. Twenty-seven percent were dropouts; they were not enrolled in school and had not graduated from high school. The five-county region is home to 267 institutions of higher education – more than any state in the nation. There are also 56 community colleges.

Labor Force
The State Employment Development Department reports that in December 2007, there were 1.95 million people in the city’s labor force, with an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent.

Business Climate
Los Angeles County is the nation’s largest manufacturing center and leads the nation in start-up businesses

* All data is LA County.Source: LA County Economic Development Corporation (updated July 2007)

Port of Los Angeles
The Port of Los Angeles is the busiest port in the U.S. (processing 8.6 million twenty-foot equivalent unit cargo containers in FY 2007) and the 10th busiest in the world.  When considered in combination with the neighboring Port of Long Beach, the ports comprise the 5th busiest container complex in the world, representing $305 billion in trade and $28 billion in state and local tax revenue each year. Together the two ports account for 85 percent of all West Coast containerized traffic, 43 percent of all containers imported into the United States and 25 percent of exported container traffic. The ports, and directly related activities, generate an estimated 485,000 regional jobs, making them the largest source of employment in Southern California

Los Angeles International Airport
The Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is the fifth busiest airport in the world based on number of passengers. In 2006, 61 million passengers used LAX (16.9 million international; 44.1 million domestic). LAX handled 70 percent of the passengers, 75 percent of the air cargo, and 95 percent of the international passengers and cargo traffic in the five-county Southern California region. LAX ranks eleventh worldwide in tons of air cargo handled, with more than 2 million tons of freight and mail shipped in 2006. LAX contributes $61 billion to the economy each year or $167 million each day. Approximately 408,000 jobs are directly or indirectly due to the airport, including more than 59,000 jobs at 254 firms at the airport itself.