Los Angeles, California, United States

🇺🇸 Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles and often abbreviated as L.A., is the largest city in California. Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, Hollywood entertainment industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The City of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California, adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, and extends through the Santa Monica Mountains and into the San Fernando Valley, covering a total of about 469 square miles (1,210 km²). It is the seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States.

Home to the Chumash and Tongva indigenous peoples, the area that became Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542. The discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The city was further expanded with the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, which delivers water from Eastern California.

Los Angeles has a diverse and robust economy, and hosts businesses in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. It also has the busiest container port in the Americas. In 2018, the Los Angeles metropolitan area had a gross metropolitan product of over $1.0 trillion, making it the city with the third-largest GDP in the world, after Tokyo and New York City. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Economy The economy of Los Angeles is driven by international trade, entertainment (television, motion pictures, video games, music recording, and production), aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion, apparel, and tourism. Other significant industries include finance, telecommunications, law, healthcare, and transportation. In the 2017 Global Financial Centres Index, Los Angeles was ranked as having the 19th most competitive financial centre in the world, and sixth most competitive in the United States (after New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C.).

One of the five major film studios, Paramount Pictures, is within the city limits, its location being part of the so-called "Thirty-Mile Zone" of entertainment headquarters in Southern California.

Los Angeles is the largest manufacturing centre in the United States. The contiguous ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together comprise the busiest port in the United States by some measures and the fifth-busiest port in the world, vital to trade within the Pacific Rim.

The Department of Cannabis Regulation enforces cannabis legislation after the legalisation of the sale and distribution of cannabis in 2016. As of October 2019, more than 300 existing cannabis businesses (both retailers and their suppliers) have been granted approval to operate in what is considered the nation's largest market.

As of 2018, Los Angeles is home to three Fortune 500 companies: AECOM, CBRE Group, and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.

The Largest Non-Government Employers in Los Angeles County include: 1 Kaiser Permanente; 2 University of Southern California; 3 Northrop Grumman Corp.; 4 Providence Health and Services Southern California; 5 Target Corp.; 6 Ralphs /Food 4 Less (Kroger Co. Division); 7 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; 8 Walt Disney Co.; 9 Allied Universal; 10 NBC Universal.