Economy
The economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area is famously and heavily based on the entertainment industry, with a particular focus on television, motion pictures, interactive games, and recorded music - the city of Hollywood and its surrounding areas are known as the "movie capital of the United States" due to the region's extreme commercial and historical importance to the American motion picture industry. Other significant sectors include shipping/international trade - particularly at the adjacent Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach, together comprising the United States' busiest seaport - as well as aerospace, technology, petroleum, fashion and apparel, and tourism.
The City of Los Angeles is home to five Fortune 500 companies - energy company Occidental Petroleum, healthcare provider Health Net, metals distributor Reliance Steel & Aluminum, engineering firm AECOM, and real estate group CB Richard Ellis.
Other companies headquartered in Los Angeles include City National Bank, 20th Century Fox, Latham & Watkins, Univision, Metro Interactive, LLC, Premier America, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, DeviantArt, Guess?, O’Melveny & Myers; Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, Tokyopop, The Jim Henson Company, Paramount Pictures, Sunkist Growers, Incorporated, Tutor Perini, Fox Sports Net, Capital Group, 21st century Insurance, and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Korean Air's US passenger and cargo operations headquarters are located in two separate offices in Los Angeles.
If the Greater Los Angeles CSA were counted as a country it would have the 15th largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, placing it just below Australia and above the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, Belgium, and Indonesia. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside combined statistical area (CSA) also has a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $831 billion (as of 2008), which makes it the third largest economic center in the world, after the Greater Tokyo Area and the New York-Newark-Bridgeport CSA.
The Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach together comprise the fifth busiest port in the world being the center of imports and exports for trade on the west Pacific Coast as well as being one of the most significant ports of the western hemisphere. The Port of Los Angeles occupies 7,500 acres (30 km2) of land and water along 43 miles (69 km) of waterfront and is the busiest container port in the United States. The Port is the busiest port in the United States by container volume, the 8th busiest container port in the world. The top trading partners in 2004 were:
China ($68.8 billion), Japan ($24.1 billion), Taiwan ($10.8 billion), Thailand ($6.7 billion), & South Korea ($5.6 billion)
The Port of Long Beach is the 2nd busiest container port in the United States. It adjoins the separate Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for U.S.-Asian trade, the port occupies 3,200 acres (13 km2) of land with 25 miles (40 km) of waterfront in the city of Long Beach, California. The seaport boasts approximately $100 billion dollars in trade and provides more than 316,000 jobs in Southern California. The Port of Long Beach import and export more than $100 billion worth of goods every year. The seaport provides the country with jobs, generate tax revenue, and supporting retail and manufacturing businesses.
Read more about this topic: Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)