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Monthly Market Intelligence · Issue No. 3

SoCal Aerospace & Defense Hiring Report

Southern California · August 2026 Edition

Issue No. 3. The first fully verified issue: 2,453 open on-site roles across all 16 tracked employers — 1,607 in the LA/OC Aerospace Corridor and 846 in San Diego — with the headline gain driven by tag changes, an underlying market flat to modestly softer, and every verified gain landing in San Diego's mid-tier.

What’s inside this issue

  • The SoCal A&D Openings Index — a same-date count of 2,453 on-site A&D roles across 16 named employers, all 16 verified for the first time — sourced from official career systems, not aggregators.
  • The first clean month-over-month read — why the +104 headline is a tag-change artifact, and what the underlying flat-to-softer market actually did.
  • What the market pays — refreshed BLS wage benchmarks for SoCal aerospace, electronics, and software roles vs. national.
  • Contracts & the demand signal — Northrop’s $3B+ missile-interceptor frameworks, the $278M NIWC Pacific engineering IDIQ, and BAE’s $149.8M USS Boxer availability.
  • Monthly Spotlight — the San Diego mid-tier surge: every verified gain this month landed in San Diego services, autonomy, and ship repair — none at the primes.

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