There are just 6 per cent more people working in greater Los Angeles than there were 25 years ago. By contrast, the Inland Empire has nearly doubled in size. In fact, the absolute number of jobs added in the Inland Empire since 1990 is nearly double the absolute number of jobs added in greater LA. To get a sense of how wild that is, the entire workforce of the Inland Empire was only 13 per cent the size of Los Angeles’s back in 1990. Even now, there are more than three workers in Los Angeles for every one in the Inland Empire.

It’s a little hard to see given the scale of the chart, but it’s also worth noting that LA experienced a Depression-level drop in employment in the early 1990s. Between January, 1990 and November, 1993, employment in the America’s second-biggest metro area fell by nearly 11 per cent. Employment didn’t return to its previous peak until July, 1999. Talk about a lost decade! (It may help explain this.)