

Downtown L.A. (Photo by Shawn Park via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)

Los Angeles has added 135,000 jobs since October 2013, bringing the city’s unemployment rate from 10 percent down to five percent.

“California’s economy is running hot right now,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, said in September, notes the L.A. Times.

“Los Angeles’ economy is surging — we’re creating jobs, attracting new business and investment, and bringing greater access to economic opportunity for all Angelenos,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “I am proud that the number of jobs in L.A. has surged past pre-1992 levels. Now is the time to keep the momentum going. We must continue investing in the people of our city, so that we can create new jobs and prosperity for years to come.”

Garcetti made the announcement at a press conference held at the headquarters of Dollar Shave Club, a startup that has tripled in size over the past three years.Courting business to Los Angeles has been one of Garcetti’s main tools in growing the city’s workforce. Growing L.A.’s exports has also been an aim of the mayor’s initiative.

Although the entertainment industry tends to dominate most people's views of L.A., the city is also the largest manufacturing center in the U.S., with more manufacturing jobs than the state of Michigan. L.A. also serves as the hub for American garment manufacturing, and plays a major role in the aerospace industry.

“Increasing exports can make our economy even stronger, by helping local companies grow and create even more good-paying jobs,” the mayor said in an October statement. “L.A. is already on the world stage, and this export initiative will give our businesses new opportunities to have global reach.”

“The Los Angeles economy has made significant gains over the past three years, both in lowering the unemployment rate and increasing the number of payroll jobs in the city,” Dr William Yu, an economist the UCLA Anderson Forecast, added to the statement. "Los Angeles now has more jobs than it did prior to the civil unrest of the early 1990s. Looking forward, human capital is the key to L.A.’s long-term prosperity."

According to Bloomberg, California recently overtook France to become the world’s sixth-largest economy with a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion.

