Los Angeles-metro government jobs, September 2026
Los Angeles-metro government employers had 734,800 people on payroll in September 2026, down 1.1% from a year earlier. That is 11.7% of all payroll jobs in the metro, against 11.9% a year before.
Federal, state and local government, including public schools, the University of California, public hospitals and the Postal Service — and, because BLS counts them as local government, tribal enterprises such as casinos. Government hiring follows tax revenue with a lag, which is why its share tends to rise in a recession: the private sector cuts first. The deep sawtooth in both lines is the school year — public-school staff come off the payroll count every summer — so this series above all needs the year-over-year comparison.
The two charts answer different questions. The count peaked at 786,700 in April 2025 and says whether the sector is hiring. The share — from 12.4% in January 1990, with a high of 14.5% in May 2010 and a low of 11.2% in August 2022 — says whether it is growing faster or slower than the rest of the economy.
Not seasonally adjusted, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The share is computed at read time from two series in the same BLS release, so it stays consistent when the levels are revised.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, State & Area Employment, government and total nonfarm payrolls, Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim MSA, not seasonally adjusted, via FRED (SMU06310809000000001, SMU06310800000000001). The share is derived at read time. Auto-generated each build.