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Los Angeles: the People Behind the Stars
A Photo Essay
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LOS ANGELES - As a teenager, Mike Layman spent nearly every day surfing by the Santa Monica Pier and working weekends at Oatman Rock Shop, which is owned by his family. After moving out at 16, the pier became even more like a second home. Now 65 and a retired mechanic, Layman still commutes two hours each day from Lake Balboa after being priced out of the city he once called home. He feels a responsibility to run the rock shop since his mother, who once ran it, passed away two years ago. Despite the long hours he puts in, he admits the business brings in little profit. Workers like Layman, who keep the city running for tourists, often experience long shifts, lengthy commutes, and minimal profits while LA’s tourism industry continues to rake in billions of dollars each year.
Mike Layman assists customers from behind the shop’s booth on the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, Calif. on February 20, 2026.
In 2025, travel spending in Los Angeles County amounted to $35.1 billion in 2025—more than any other county in the state—and supported 1.2 million jobs across California. But, while the tourism industry is frequently defended for its economic contributions, there remains a large disparity in where that money ends up. A 2024 Travel Foundation report found that on average, between 50% and 80% of total tourist spendings left the local regions, a phenomenon referred to as economic leakage.
Caroline Brenner, a data insights specialist for the Travel Foundation, said that tourism is one of the most significant economic forces in the world: “Accounting for a significant 10.5% of global GDP, but as we know, the benefits aren’t automatically shared.”
An employee at the Oatman Rock Shop on the Santa Monica pier sits, awaiting customers on Feb. 20, 2026 in Santa Monica, Calif.
Layman sells to a customer on Feb. 20 in Santa Monica, Calif. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Layman grew up in Santa Monica and would help his mom with their rock shop on weekends ever since he was 16.
“This was my playground. We used to surf here all the time,” he said.
Back then, the business made enough for Layman’s single mother, who raised four kids, to support the family. Now, Layman says, the shop could make enough to support a single family, but operating expenses and paying other employees adds up. He described how the shop used to receive more business when it was centrally located on the pier, prior to a 1983 storm that destroyed much of the pier’s structure. Layman was 22 at the time, and remembers the waves flooding their store. He also remembers surfing the storm’s 30 to 40-foot waves.
“We were out there surfing. It was huge. We lived for days like that,” he said. When the pier was rebuilt, his family’s rock shop was moved to a small booth on the side to make room for the construction of Pacific Park, which they were told would be a temporary arrangement. The shop has been in the same spot since.
A roller coaster flies by at Pacific Park on the Santa Monica pier, in Santa Monica, Calif. on Feb. 20, 2026. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
The park opened in 1996 following a catastrophic storm in 1983, as a way to bring in more tourists. Layman has noticed the increase over the years.
“I think it was more local,” he said, referring to the pier when he was younger.
“I don’t remember it ever being this crowded. It seems like the crowds really increased once Pacific Park was added.”
Now, the majority of Layman’s customers are tourists. He earns a salary, but as a retiree he says running the shop is “definitely still full-time work.”
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Mike Layman at Oatman Rock Shop on the Santa Monica Pier on Feb. 20 in Santa Monica, Calif. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
“I’ve been working since I was 15 or 16, so work is just part of life for me,” he said.
About ten years ago, Layman moved to the Lake Balboa neighborhood because Santa Monica became too expensive for him to continue living there with his wife, two kids, and pets. Layman’s commute to the shop now takes an hour and a half—sometimes more—and he’s there almost every day.
“I’m basically there every day in some capacity. … There aren’t many days off,” he said.
Layman hopes to eventually properly retire and spend more time at a property his brother has in Mexico, but he doesn’t plan to do so until the business is more stable and established.
Beach vendors next to the Santa Monica Pier sell well into the night on Jan. 31 in Santa Monica, Calif. Identifiable with their iconic rainbow umbrellas, the vendors are a fixture of LA’s culture. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Vendors in Santa Monica, Calif. on Jan. 31. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Vendors like the fruteros of Santa Monica, are predominantly Latino immigrants and officially not allowed to sell in many tourist spots near the pier. In 2014, the Santa Monica City Council adopted an ordinance to ban vendors from the pier, Palisades Park, and the beach, citing them as potential hazards for congestion and restricting emergency access. Those who do not comply risk being fined, having their products disposed of, or facing misdemeanor charges.
But due to the area’s high foot traffic and business opportunities, many vendors risk the consequences regardless.
Additionally, LA’s ICE raids have been targeting street vendors, with some closing their stands and many afraid to leave their homes to work. Saba Waheed, a research director of the UCLA Labor Center, described how tourism workers, like street vendors, often find themselves at the intersection of various legal issues.
“Immigration status, the fear of our city being under attack from ICE raids, and it's more dangerous to go out, but you still have to work. So I feel like there's a whole other set of issues that come when you're in these kinds of front-facing jobs, but then also experience these multi-level attacks,” she said.
Noemi Urbina works as a game attendant at Pacific Park in Santa Monica, Calif. on Jan. 31, 2026. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Noemi Urbina, 18, is a UCLA marine biology student from Riverside, Calif. She works at the beach, but not studying marine biology. On weekends, Urbina commutes an hour by public transit from her dorm to the Santa Monica Pier, where she works as a game attendant at Pacific Park. Urbina described how campus jobs are highly competitive, forcing her to look further for work.
“Applying to on-campus jobs was really hard. I applied to about four and didn’t hear anything back. So I started looking off-campus,” she said.
“I knew the commute would be long, but I needed the money to help pay for tuition,” Urbina said.
As a first-year student without a car, she relies on public transit and the occasional rideshare to get around. On an evening shift, Urbina would often get off around midnight and take an Uber or Waymo home, because the buses no longer ran and she felt unsafe commuting alone at night.
“My shifts can be pretty long. The last time I worked [an evening shift], I got home around 2 or 3 in the morning, so it can be pretty tiring,” she said.
Pacific Park employees are not unionized and Urbina said most of her coworkers are part-time. As a full time student, the money Urbina makes on weekends goes primarily towards her $16k-a-year tuition, she said.
Even with eight-hour shifts, the $17.80 pay wasn’t getting her far enough.
After about four months, she quit her job at the pier. She had applied again for an on-campus job, and this time her retail experience at Pacific Park, she believed, had given her more appeal in the hiring process. She now works at Jimmy’s Coffeehouse on campus, where she no longer has to deal with long commutes and gets paid more.
“Not only was it a hassle commuting, but it was also … a lot on what I was trying to do because it would take up a lot of space in my day-to-day life,” she said reflecting on her time working at the pier.
Madison Ledyard-King is an Erewhon host on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. Feb. 20, 2026. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Madison Ledyard-King, 26, is a host at Erewhon, a trendy upscale grocery store on Rodeo Drive which has gained global attention for its online virality. The store sees more tourists and celebrities than locals shopping for groceries, Ledyard-King said.
“Even when I talk to locals in Beverly Hills, they say it wasn’t always like this. But because of Hollywood and celebrities around Rodeo, tourists have kind of overtaken the local population,” he said.
Ledyard-King moved to LA from his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio a year ago in hopes of breaking into the film and entertainment industry. He originally studied business management in college but says he fell in love with storytelling after he joined a community theater play and switched his major to media production. For him, his 40-hour a week Erewhon job, in which he greets customers at the door, is simply a stepping stone to get him closer towards his career goal.
“It’s easy for me to compartmentalize my work there and then go home and focus on my actual career,” he said.
His ultimate dream is to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor, a feat only George Clooney and Brad Pitt have achieved.
Ledyard-King currently lives in South LA in a house with five other roommates, making his monthly rent out to be less than $1,000 each–a price he says he “lucked out on.” He says he gets paid more than minimum wage at his host job, with the average Erewhon host making $18.97, per data from online job listings. Erewhon employees are not unionized and a lot of his coworkers, Ledyard-King says, are not at the store for long-term careers.
“A lot of people are hustling to make it in entertainment. Many of us also have multiple jobs to help with finances,” he said.
For now, Ledyard-King plans to stay at the grocery store until he gains some traction in the entertainment industry.
Francis Daniel outside the Crypto Arena in downtown Los Angeles on April 12, 2026.
Francis Daniel, 64, rarely misses a Los Angeles Lakers game. She is one of about twenty other merchandise vendors who sets up outside the Crypto.com Arena in downtown LA whenever the team plays. Daniel’s booth, complete with jerseys, key chains, and hats, acts as another source of income for her main job as a nanny to a family in Manhattan Beach. She has been working as a nanny for almost 20 years and works eight hour days, five days a week, while selling Lakers merchandise on her off days. Daniel currently lives in Cudahy, a low-income, working class neighborhood in southeast LA, where 28.7% (2024) are considered below the poverty line.
Merchandise vendors often operate directly out of their cars, forcing them to pay expensive parking rates directly in front of the Crypto Arena in downtown Los Angeles. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
When asked how much she makes in a day vending, Daniel said it depends. On a better day, she might make $400 after an 8-hour gig. Daniel pays $50 for parking in a lot directly in front of the arena, so she can easily set up and access her booth.
“Sometimes you don’t sell nothing. … so sometimes you don’t even make up that $50,” she said.
When Daniel was just 15, she reluctantly moved with the rest of her family from Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego, California.
“It was really hard. .. at that age. You have to start all over again … because you’re a teenager,” she said.
Daniel described feeling very depressed during this time of her life, and shortly after stopped going to school following a traumatic experience on her bus commute one day. After that day, Daniel was scared to commute to school and immediately began working at 16 as a quality control worker in a factory. At 19, she met her husband while out one night and the two eventually moved in together with their three kids. Thirty one years ago, he passed away in a car crash and Daniel was left with two teenagers and a baby to raise on her own. She worked various odd jobs to make ends meet, before settling as a full-time nanny.
When asked how she manages everything, Daniel said, “It’s a lot. But this is not everything. … I’m 64 and I’m still happy.”
Courtney Campbell, 42, is a jewelry and clothing vendor on the Venice Beach Boardwalk who runs a small shop with the help of her two daughters and daughter’s boyfriend. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
When Courtney Campbell was 13, she moved to LA from New York, where she grew up along with her family. She later moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to be closer to her grandmother, working as a marketing manager at a logistics company straight out of high school. Campbell continued with that job until four years ago, when she felt she needed a change in her life.
“I just got tired and ready for a change. I wanted to be my own boss, start my own business, create my own lifestyle for myself, and so I said, you know what, let me come here and see what I can do,” she said.
So Campbell moved back to LA, showed up to the Venice Beach Boardwalk with her waist beads, nails, jewelry, and tooth gems, and began selling.
After a while, she had established herself on the boardwalk and other vendors tended to respect her spot.
“I wanted to make women feel beautiful,” she said. “That was my thing.”
A year ago, she saw a vacant space for rent across the boardwalk and decided to begin renting it for her shop. On a good day vending, Campbell might sell $1,500 to $1,700, but the shop rent, she says, is very expensive.
“So then I had to work day and night, you know, ‘cause I didn't anticipate it, and then my day doesn't stop sometimes because I'm a property manager,” she said.
Campbell doesn’t make any extra income from being a property manager, only a discount on her own rent, which allows her to live just a block from where she sells.
She is at the boardwalk seven days a week, and usually works 12 hour days, vending, and talking with customers.
Courtney Campbell, a jewelry vendor, hands a collection of waist beads off to her daughter while selling at their booth along the Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles, Calif. on April 17, 2026.
Campbell’s days are long, but she has two of her daughters help out at the shop, which has lightened her load. It also helps to gossip, she joked.
“You know, there's some days you can go, you know, without any money and you're sitting out here all day. But if you're gossiping? It's worth it, right? The time passes,” she said.
Campbell describes how busy her job gets in the summer months, when it’s peak tourist season.
“I might be crying now like, ‘we don't have any customers,’ but girl, you know, I'll be regretting those words in the summertime,” she said.
For vendors like Campbell, the day’s income depends on how much demand there was–which can be hard to calculate ahead of time. Last summer, she said, was horrible for business. Campbell believes the Trump administration’s immigration policies and ICE raids impacted the number of tourists who visited the city, and she felt the effects.
Bike riders stop in front of a food vendor window on the Venice Beach Boardwalk next to Campbell's shop on April 17, 2026 in Los Angeles, Calif. Shops and food stands along the boardwalk frequently cater to tourists visiting the city. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Despite this, Campbell is on the boardwalk everyday selling, alongside other beach vendors.
She described her fellow vendors as “go-getters,” saying, “I love the community. I'll be here for another 20 years. I'm not going anywhere yet.”
For now, Campbell said she is content. In the future, she hopes to retire in 20 years, stay in LA, and potentially get married.
Julian Smith stands outside the Universal Studios Hollywood entrance before a Unite Here Local 11 union demonstration begins on Feb. 26, 2026 in Los Angeles. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Julian Smith, 33, originally from New Jersey, went to college for animation and creative writing, but thought that those fields wouldn’t pay enough to make a living.
“I'm still making art and stuff, but it doesn't pay. I couldn't get $1,000 a month to pay for rent,” he said.
Smith continues to practice his art and improve, in hopes that he can one day sell his work and make enough from it to sustain himself.
He moved to LA along with his mom in 2019 and lives in a house with her and his sister. Smith commutes to Universal Studios Hollywood from Crenshaw with public transport, making his almost daily trip about an hour and a half one-way.
A 2023 UCLA Labor & Employment report found that 26% of Universal workers had commutes over an hour-long (one way), due to an inability to afford living closer to the theme park. Some workers even reported renting hotel rooms or sleeping in their cars to avoid the long commutes.
On an average day at work, Smith will be on the register at various restaurants in the park, taking orders for eight hours and interacting with a couple hundred guests.
Although Smith admits it can get exhausting, “I'm able to, you know … just let things roll off. Maybe it's just the way I am as a person,” he said.
Unite Here Local 11 union members march on the Universal Studios Hollywood red carpet leading towards the theme park’s main entrance on Feb. 26 in Los Angeles. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
Smith is one of thousands of Universal Studios employees unionized under Unite Here Local 11, a union supporting more than 31,000 hospitality workers across Southern California and Arizona. He makes $23 an hour and receives benefits under the union. Smith says he feels a sense of community with his coworkers, and particularly within Unite Here Local 11.
“It gives us voice,” he said, describing the union.
He previously worked retail at Dollar Tree for two years, where he said he was eventually fired after being wrongfully connected to his assistant manager who was caught stealing money from the register.
“It was just me. I didn't have anybody to advocate for me,” he said, talking about how he was fired.
Smith likes to keep involved with the union and joined a Feb. 26 Unite Here Local 11 demonstration outside the Universal Studios Hollywood entrance where thousands of park employees marched for the unionization of their CityWalk coworkers.
“They get five hours a day, maybe for the whole week. They have, like, no stability. No work-life balance. They're not getting any work,” Smith said about the Universal Studios CityWalk employees.
Park goers snap photos and videos of a union demonstration along Universal Studios CityWalk on Feb. 26 in Los Angeles. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
A 2023 UCLA report found that the average Universal worker’s wage was $17.65 an hour—a wage that 67% reported as insufficient to cover basic living expenses in LA.
With the average living expenses for a single person at an annual $60,000 (housing, food, transportation, utilities, etc.) as calculated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology data, a Universal Studios worker would have to work a little more than 65 hours a week in order to make ends meet.
Compared to other industries, California’s tourism and travel industry is on average lower paid, according to a 2017 RAND report. The same report found that tourism workers were the second largest group most likely to be part-time, after education, at 31%. Due to a lack of potential career advancement in the industry, many end up leaving for higher wages and growth opportunities. About two-thirds of workers who left moved to employment in a different industry, and 15% at least doubled their earnings once doing so.
A LA Fantastic Tours bus rides across the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Dayton Way on Feb. 14, 2026 in Los Angeles. Tour buses are common sights across the city’s tourist spots. Photo by Lisa Jacobs.
While tourism does stimulate the economy, it often comes at the expense of working class people who do not share the financial benefits.
As Los Angeles prepares to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics, labor advocacy groups have pushed for higher wages for tourism workers in one of the country’s most expensive cities. In May 2025, the Los Angeles City Council voted to approve a $30 minimum wage increase for hotel and airport employees after years of advocacy by unions, like Unite Here Local 11. The ordinance, dubbed the “Olympic Wage,” proposed an incremental yearly wage increase set to reach $30 by 2028 as a way to match rising living costs. Airline and hotel business groups like Delta, United Airlines, and the American Hotel and Lodging Association lobbied against the proposal, but failed to gain enough signatures to repeal it. However, the issue still remains a topic of debate as L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson introduced a motion in Dec. 2025 to delay the wage increase. The proposal has since been forwarded to two committees and is awaiting review.
Maria Hernandez, a Unite Here Local 11 representative, emphasized the importance of these labor protections ahead of events like the World Cup and Olympic games.
“[Unite Here Local 11] members are the backbone of the Los Angeles region's tourism and hospitality industry,” she said. “Our cooks, dishwashers, servers, housekeepers, hotel and food service workers will be an integral part in making the games a success.”
The tourism industry remains highly labor-intensive, relying on a steady flow of workers to meet seasonal demand, endure long hours, and perform emotionally demanding service roles. With limited opportunities for career advancement and a heavy dependence on short-term employees, these conditions continue to drive high turnover across the sector.
Waheed, UCLA Labor Center research director, believes there is a more equitable path to tourism. “LA continues to be a harder and harder city to afford, so you can solve a lot of problems by just giving folks a wage that they can live off of,” she said. In addition to livable wages, Waheed believes transitioning from corporate to local ownership of tourism can reduce the industry’s economic leakage.
“It's all about how you build it, because there is a lot of money in tourism. LA is an amazing place, it's got amazing neighborhoods, it's got amazing food. But how can we leverage that to actually give back to those neighborhoods that are ignored or neglected?” she said.
To create a fairer system, tourism’s benefits must be more equitably distributed, and achieving this requires greater local control over resources, which often comes in opposition to commercial-scale businesses.
“We want the tourist culture, but we want control over it,” said Waheed.
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