LA cluster adding thousands of jobs

Southern California’s aerospace corridor is adding thousands of high-skill jobs, led by defense and flight startups expanding in Long Beach and El Segundo. (anduril.com) Anduril said on January 22, 2026 that its new Long Beach and Lakewood campus will support about 5,500 direct jobs at full capacity when it comes online in mid-2027. The company said the site will span about 1.18 million square feet across six buildings, with 750,000 square feet of offices and 435,000 square feet of industrial research and development space. (anduril.com) Hermeus said on April 7, 2026 that it had raised $350 million in Series C financing and was opening a new headquarters in El Segundo as it scales from prototypes to multiple F-16-size aircraft. The company said its Atlanta site will shift toward production while the California office grows its prototyping footprint. (hermeus.com) The hiring wave is clustering around places already branded as aerospace hubs. Long Beach business leaders have pushed the “Space Beach” label, and the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation says aerospace, defense and space commercialization remain a signature regional strength. (labusinessjournal.com) (laedc.org) The jobs are also likely to pay well above the area average. Workers across the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area earned a mean hourly wage of $36.64 in May 2024, or about $76,000 a year, while the national median annual wage for aerospace engineers was $134,830. (bls.gov 1) (bls.gov 2) That expansion is landing as NASA faces a tighter budget picture. NASA’s fiscal 2027 budget request, released in April 2026, seeks $18.8 billion, down from $24.4 billion enacted for fiscal 2026 and $24.8 billion in fiscal 2025. (nasa.gov) NASA’s request still sets aside $3.0 billion for a commercial orbital economy and $624 million for space technology partnerships with industry, government and academia. But the overall drop has sharpened the split between civil-space funding pressure and private defense spending now driving much of Southern California’s hiring. (nasa.gov) For students and job seekers, the map of opportunity is widening across civil space, defense systems and commercial manufacturing in the same metro area. The companies adding headcount are betting that Southern California still offers the dense engineering workforce, test infrastructure and supplier base they need to build here. (anduril.com) (labusinessjournal.com)