LA’s 2026 Growth Drivers: Life Sciences

Fire recovery, the 2028 Olympics build-out, and responses to climate-related challenges are driving a significant proportion of economic decision-making activities in the Los Angeles basin these days. They are not the only focus, however, in this region of over 10,000,000 people. Both LA County and LA City support numerous industrial sectors and hubs, all of which continue to evolve in both economic growth and community influence. One such sector is unique to the area, however, that of Life Sciences. And if the activities of LA’s many leadership boards are any indication, the sector will continue to grow. The Life Sciences industry in LA County is on track to be adding jobs, careers, and opportunities in the coming years to provide economic and personal growth for anyone who chooses to get involved.

The LA Region Offers a Unique Opportunity for the Life Sciences Industry

As an overview, the LA Basin has already created a substantial foundation on which future scientific research will be built.

• The area is home to more than 120 colleges, universities, and schools offering a wide scope of life science-related learning.
• In addition, over 3,900 life sciences companies employ over 96,000 direct workers, plus another ~100,000 supporting or ancillary jobs across its industrial subsectors, generating millions of dollars each year for the local economy.
• Not least, active Venture Capital investing is pumping over $7.7 billion into the development, growth, and sustainability of the industry.

These efforts dovetail with the legislative mandate to prioritize Life Sciences as a primary sector in the California Jobs First Economic Blueprint, which Governor Newsom launched in February 2025. As a public/private project, individuals, companies, and businesses are accessing the region’s ample logistics, financial, and creative resources to leverage their smaller capacities to achieve greater successes. And all of Los Angeles will benefit from the long-term economic stability that the current investment activity is designed to provide.

LA County’s 5-Year Life Science Industry Strategy

Birth of a Strategy:

Shortly after the Governor’s announcement, LA County introduced its own strategy to harness state-level energy to its county-level goals. In July 2025, the LA County Board of Supervisors authorized the launch of the Life Sciences Industry Strategy and Action Plan (LSISAP), developed by the County’s Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO). The plan is to create 10,000+ jobs in the life sciences sector by 2030, which would establish the LA area as a global leader in biological sciences innovation. Three years in the making (rising from the Board’s 2022 motion to accelerate growth in the sector), the LSISAP gathered resources from its extensive stakeholder engagement in numerous, existing life science employment pathways, including:

• Bio Futures seminars
• The South Bay Workforce Investment Board’s Bio-Flex Pre-Apprenticeship Program
• And regionally based incubators, including CSULA’s LA BioSpace and The Lundquist Institute’s BioLabs.

Building on these foundations, the strategy will enhance their capacities while adding cutting-edge labs, programs, and initiatives to move the sector forward.

Barriers to Overcome:

While the development and pursuit of science-related career pathways and healthcare goals are high priorities of the LSISAP, it is also focused on alleviating many of the social challenges facing the regional community. While all residents are affected by high housing costs and crowded transportation corridors, the region’s ethnic communities continue to struggle with low pay and fewer job options. Opportunities to overcome these barriers are incorporated into the Strategy through the reformation of several civic systems, including amending the permitting process to speed the processes of research and lab development, rezoning neighborhoods to facilitate the development of new scientific facilities, and enhancing support services at the County level to reduce racial and gender disparities in the many related life science subsectors.

Next Steps:

The County immediately began executing its Strategy. Shortly after announcing the project, it:

• Deployed $5.8 million from its Bioscience Loan Fund to develop research facility infrastructure within County boundaries;
• Began seeking up to $2 million for Life Sciences High Road Training Partnerships (HRTPs) to align emerging training programs with local and regional industry needs;
• Began conversations with the Department of Regional Planning (DRP) to identify rezoning opportunities within the region to open facilities development in all corners of the County;
• Began outreach activities to attract and support life science companies as they navigate their way through the bureaucratic process, and
• Began looking for funding sources to implement and expand the Strategy’s activities and goals.

Why This Strategy? Why Now?

The foundational thought process underlying LA County’s Life Science Hub development strategy is simple: because it can. Los Angeles enjoys assets that most other national (and even international) locales can’t recreate:

• With an annual GDP of $4.25 trillion, Los Angeles County’s economy is both the State of California’s largest economic driver and the world’s 5th-largest stand-alone economy.
• Its dual commercial ports, the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, facilitate California’s $676 billion annual two-way trade activity and process 40% of the entire country’s container traffic. This logistics hub alone accounts for millions of jobs across the nation and drives billions of dollars of economic output each year.
• California, in general, is also known for its venture capital (VC) investment community, which accounted for 32% of all national VC deals in 2025.

Additionally, the Life Science Hub strategy builds on an already substantial foundation:

• Six major Life science subsectors have already grounded themselves in LA County:

• • Medtech and medical devices,
  • Biopharmaceuticals and medical therapies,
  • Biomanufacturing,
  • Diagnostics and precision medicine,
  • Digital Health and Biotechnologies, and
  • Agricultural and environmental resources that underlie the research and supply chains.
• Despite the real-property crunch of limited lab space, the region has been developing lab-ready facilities and now boasts 11.3 million square feet open for R&D purposes.
• The region’s 19 Community Colleges form a collective known as the Los Angeles Regional Consortium (LARC), which engages with businesses, schools, and workers to develop training and job-related programs, including those for the health care and life science industries.
• The County’s 10+ million residents represent virtually every global culture and nationality, making it one of the most diverse communities in the world. The region’s 20+ health systems and 150+ health centers use data from this diversity pool to inform their decisions and actions.

Los Angeles has experienced significant losses and major upsets in the past few years, from which many of its residents are still struggling to recover. Enhanced investments and improved systems in all industries, including the life sciences sector, can help speed these recovery processes. Considering the depth and breadth of its planning and leverage, it’s almost certain that LA County and its 88 cities will see growth – both economic and social – in the coming years.