Business
Jobs at the Port of Los Angeles are down by half, executive director says
Job opportunities at the Port of Los Angeles are dwindling as President Trump’s steep tariffs take a hit on global trade and a major economic engine for the regional economy.
Nearly half of the longshoremen who support operations at the port went without work over the last two weeks, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in an interview.
The port processed 25% less cargo than forecast for the month of May, he said.
Trump’s tariffs have drastically stemmed the flow of goods into the U.S., driving down activity at the neighboring ports of L.A. and Long Beach, which collectively processed more than 20 million 20-foot-long cargo units last year.
The two ports are the largest in the country and provide jobs for thousands of dockworkers, heavy equipment operators and truck drivers.
But work has fallen off sharply in recent weeks. Over the last 25 work shifts, only 733 jobs were available for 1,575 longshoremen looking for work.
“They haven’t been laid off, but they’re not working nearly as much as they did previously,” Seroka told The Times. “Since the tariffs went into place, and in May specifically, we’ve really seen the work go off on the downside.”
Marine terminal operators post available work opportunities, known as job orders, on a digital board at the port three times a day. Longshoremen can review the job orders at each shift and bid on the jobs they want to take. If there are more longshoremen than job orders, a portion of workers will go without pay.
The average of 733 job orders posted over the past 25 shifts, which is equal to roughly two weeks, is unusually low.
Ordinarily, between 1,700 and 2,000 job orders are posted during a typical day shift, and between 1,100 and 1,400 are posted during a standard night shift.
Seroka attributed the decrease in job opportunities to lower cargo volume moving through the port.
In May, 17 cargo ships canceled their planned trips to Los Angeles amid uncertainty over duties the Trump administration imposed worldwide.
Although May is typically a busier month than April, this past May saw 18% less cargo processed than the month prior, according to port data.
The falloff comes during a critical time in advance of the Christmas shopping season, orders for which are usually placed before July 1.
Conditions are not expected to significantly improve anytime soon.
“The June numbers that we’re projecting right now are nowhere near where they traditionally should be,” Seroka said.
An average of five ships have entered the port each day over the last week. This time of year, there would typically be between 10 and 12 ships in the port each day.
“The drop in cargo volume caused by Trump’s tariffs will mean empty shelves when products don’t reach our stores, rising prices on everything from groceries to clothes to cars, and undoubtedly, more Americans out of work,” U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California said in a news conference last month.
The decline in shipping has broader ripple effects on L.A.’s logistics economy.
A 2023 report found that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contributed $21.8 billion in direct revenue to local service providers, generating $2.7 billion in state and local taxes and creating 165,462 jobs, directly and indirectly.
A decline of just 1% in cargo to the ports would wipe away 2,769 jobs and endanger as many as 4,000 others, the study found.
Union officials could not be reached for comment on Friday but had previously predicted job losses for their members.
“Some of the workforce will not be getting their full 40 hours a week based on the loss of cargo,” Gary Herrera, president of the longshoremen union ILWU Local 13, warned last month.
“That is going to have an effect on the work opportunities for not just us, but for truck drivers, warehouse workers and logistics teams,” he said.
The slowdown in activity at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach has also spread into surrounding communities. Businesses in the area rely on a robust community of port workers to frequent their establishments.
“We’re starting to hear from small businesses and restaurants in the harbor area that their customer patronage is trending downward,” Seroka said. “Outside of COVID, this is the biggest drop I’ve seen in my career.”
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.
The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.
Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.
Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.
In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”
When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
Paez refuted the claim.
“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.
Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”
“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.
When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”
At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”
In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.
In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”
In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.
Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.
Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.
-
Politics5 minutes agoTrump Cabinet member scraps Obama-era gender identity housing rule, cites ‘biological reality’
-
Health11 minutes agoRiley Gaines shares 5 wellness tips she swears by as a new mom: ‘Really powerful’
-
Sports17 minutes agoChiefs and Browns make first trade of 2026 draft and both eventually fill needs
-
Technology23 minutes agoHow Florida retiree lost $200K in fake PayPal refund scam
-
Business29 minutes ago
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
-
Entertainment35 minutes agoFormer Live Nation executive says he was fired after raising ‘financial misconduct’ concerns
-
Lifestyle41 minutes agoThey set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
-
Politics47 minutes agoHouse Oversight chair says some members support a Ghislaine Maxwell pardon