SoCal Aerospace & Defense Hiring Report

What’s inside this issue

• The SoCal A&D Openings Index — a same-date count of 3,092 on-site A&D roles across all 16 tracked employers, up 13.6% from September and the highest reading in the series — sourced from official career systems, not aggregators.
• Growth on every cut — SpaceX’s Hawthorne site (+179) and Lockheed’s Palmdale site (+73) lead the gain, but set aside all four big risers and the rest of the market is still up 3.4%.
• The expanded 19-employer sample — the first month-over-month read on Aerospace Corporation, Castelion, and NASSCO, with 3,538 roles across all nineteen.
• Contracts & the demand signal — Lockheed’s $871.2M F-35 support ceiling in El Segundo, the B-21 production groundbreaking at Palmdale, and L3Harris’s $100M+ Canoga Park expansion.
• Monthly Spotlight — Palmdale’s restricted-programs corridor, where four tracked employers post nearly 400 on-site openings.

Free, published monthly. Subscribe once and we’ll let you know when each new issue is available.