Unemployment in the city of Los Angeles, September 2026


4.5% of the city of Los Angeles’s labor force was unemployed in September 2026, against 5.9% a year earlier. Across the whole metro area the rate was 4.4% in September 2026. The city’s highest rate in this record was 19.4%, in May 2020.
The city had 2,063,560 people in its labor force — working or looking for work, against 2,103,591 a year earlier.
Neither figure is seasonally adjusted — BLS publishes city estimates no other way — so compare a month with the same month a year earlier. The city figures are modelled by BLS from the metro and county estimates and revised each March.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Los Angeles city and the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area. Auto-generated each build.