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Long Beach news

Most city workers, it turns out, don’t live in the city. Many don’t even live in Los Angeles County. 

And despite a massive number of local applicants — especially from West and Central Long Beach — many never get a call back or offer, according to a city jobs report released this month. 

The memo found that more than 3,800 municipal employees (56%) live outside a Long Beach ZIP code. Hundreds live in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with some commuting as far away as Temecula, Menifee and Thousand Oaks. 

But this likely isn’t because of a lack of interest. 

Between May 2025 and March 2026, the city says it received 37,772 job applications from residents across Long Beach’s neighborhoods — ZIP codes 90802, 90804, 90805, 90806, 90813, 90814 and 90815. Each of them had a heavy amount of applicants, and most ended the period with little “to near zero hiring conversion.”

Applicants were apparently screened out for things like incomplete paperwork, missing documentation and failing to meet the minimum qualifications. But the majority, according to the city, were “referred to the department but ultimately never progressed to hire within the reporting window.”

This is happening despite a lot of efforts by Long Beach to expedite its hiring process and jazz locals on the idea of municipal jobs. In the 2026 fiscal year, the city held 29% more career fairs and 73% more workshops and training sessions. The city has also followed through on a voter-approved measure to consolidate the Civil Service and Human Resources departments, which both had a hand in hiring processes, to hasten hiring from historically sluggish to an average of 90 days. They even added a small boost in hiring preference for those who live, work, study and apprentice in Long Beach.

Yet despite their efforts, problems persist. Latino workers, despite making up Long Beach’s largest share of the population and its municipal workforce (41.8%), hold about 29% of managerial positions. White workers, meanwhile, make up 28.6% of city staff but 39% of the managerial roles, which typically make more than $150,000 annually. 

In its recommendations, the city wants to launch a hiring strategy specific for interested applicants in the five ZIP codes with the highest application volume and lowest hiring success — 90802, 90804, 90805, 90806 and 90813 — and hold quarterly recruitment events, examination preparation resources and application assistance workshops. A subsequent expansion would reach 90814 and 90815.

Officials also acknowledge they need to improve their communication with applicants, including status updates and document reminders, to address one of the most common points of failure in the current process.

The municipal government is one of Long Beach’s largest employers, and city services have strained under the weight of thousands of vacant positions. Those vacancies have real-world impacts: streets that are often unswept, park facilities that remain closed longer for maintenance, or residents who wait weeks for a return call on service problems.

The goal is not only to fill those vacancies, but officials say more of them should be filled by the people who live closest to the problem and are most motivated to help solve it.

Key updates from last week:

  • Despite boosts in personal income tax receipts and a stronger stock market, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed fiscal year 2027 state budget, which now totals $349.9 billion — slightly above the January estimate of $348.9 billion — does not add any new funding for homelessness measures and introduces new eligibility requirements, including pro-housing designations and local matching funds, that could intensify competition among local governments for limited resources. The revision also proposes barring affordable housing projects from competitive state funding if the lead local government charges development impact fees on those projects.
  • The Port of Long Beach last week celebrated its establishment of a green trucking corridor between Los Angeles and Mexico, with trucking company Bali Express Services as its inaugural member to aggressively begin transitioning its fleet to zero-emission models by 2040. About 90% of the U.S.-Mexico trade, worth $872.83 billion annually, is handled by trucking companies. 
  • Long Beach is showing strong interest among renters in Southern California. In its latest Renter Engagement Tracker, RentCafe ranks Long Beach seventh nationwide with a 22% climb in saved searches since last year. The most interest, it found, came from renters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.  The same report placed Los Angeles at 25th nationally. 

ICYMI — California and national news

  • Want to speak your mind? You’ll soon be able to call into Long Beach City Council meetings. (Long Beach Post)
  • Weapons builder to open missile frame factory in Long Beach (Long Beach Post)
  • Judge orders Huntington Beach to adopt ‘ranked-choice’ voting to settle dispute over Latino votes (LAist)
  • Billionaire tax, affordable housing: See the measures on California’s November ballot (CalMatters)