When it comes to talk of startup businesses in the California region, the two words that usually come to mind are Silicon Valley.  But actually when we take a look at the numbers (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics) we find a staggering $656 billion in GDP (27 percent of California’s economic output) that in 2015 came from LA County!

In manufacturing, 341,000 jobs were generated (with close to $25 billion in 2017 wages).  LA boasts the second largest economy and right now – vis-à-vis GDP per capita, global trade and transportation, home prices, municipal debt, corporate equity and jobs – it is doing better than the largest and the third largest (New York and Chicago respectively). So with all of these variables, LA is faring really well.

Homelessness is a synonym often associated with LA but even that seems to not be as bad; in fact in 2018 it actually receded quite significantly.