EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — The line outside the Los Angeles area Hilton hotel meeting room was long. Populated by men and women of all ages and styles of dress, the line of people stretched through a lobby area and doubled back on itself as job seekers waited their turn to get into a career fair.
What You Need To Know
Hundreds of people attended a career fair in El Segundo, California, looking for jobs
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that 22,000 jobs were created in August; the unemployment rate was 4.3%
Recent consumer surveys found many Americans are worried about losing their jobs
Diversity Career Group is one of dozens of organizations and universities that host thousands of job fairs around the U.S. each year
“I’ve been looking for work for eight months now,” said Leslie DeGeorge.
An elegant blonde in a blue suit who lives in El Segundo, she worked as a Hollywood prop master for 30 years until February, when the show where she was employed was not renewed.
“I thought, I don’t know if this business is going to keep supporting us. Let’s figure out a pivot,” DeGeorge said of herself and her husband, who also worked on a now-canceled Hulu show, and who have struggled to find jobs in their field since last year’s writers and actors strikes.
“I am open,” she said, after dropping off her resume with a nonprofit that provides counseling for troubled youth. “I’m doing this career-change pivot. I have to. I mean, nobody’s hiring prop masters.”
With the job market slowing, Americans’ views of their personal finances are down 13% since the start of 2025, with 65% of consumers polled by the University of Michigan in September saying they expect unemployment to increase in the coming year — almost double the number who said so a year ago. Consumers’ expectations of personal job loss have steadily grown since March, the consumer sentiment survey reported Friday.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this month that 22,000 non-farm payrolls jobs were created in August — far lower than many economists expected. It also said the number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job is 6.4 million — up 722,000 over the year. According to the BLS, the unemployment rate in August was 4.3%.
On Thursday, the career fair that is held for free every two months at the Hilton near Los Angeles International Airport attracted more than 200 job seekers.
“This is pretty par,” said Phyllis Riley, co-owner of Diversity Career Group, which has been hosting career fairs in California, Arizona, Colorado and Texas for 26 years and is one of dozens of organizations and universities that host thousands of job fairs around the U.S. each year.
All year, the fair has attracted 200 to 400 job seekers per event, Riley said, though the mix of prospective workers has shifted slightly.
Earlier in the year, more attendees were looking to step up in their careers, she said. “Now there’s some unemployed; some people just graduated. That’s typical. This isn’t an outlier right now. That would probably be more than 400 people.”
Thursday’s fair included a car rental company seeking counter staff, an adolescent caregiving nonprofit looking for counselors and Los Angeles County seeking probation officers.
“As the economy goes up and down, we just kind of ride with it,” Riley said of the fair’s rotating roster of employers.
These days, she’s noticed more businesses looking for workers in behavioral health and home health care and fewer federal agencies. The Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, IRS and FBI have all recruited through the event previously because they have offices in the LA area, but the federal hiring freeze seems to have stopped it, Riley said.
At Thursday’s events, the 11 employers seeking workers had about 200 jobs on offer, according to Riley, who said about 20 people at the fair were likely to be hired through the event.
“The majority of potential candidates that come here have their bachelor’s degree, which is a requirement that we have, so that’s perfect for us,” said Sonia Barajas, a recruiter for LA County Probation who was looking to sign up 30 people through the job fair for a hiring process that can take as long as nine months.
One of the applicants was Alexis Moore, a 35-year-old former football player with a 1-year-old baby who was working for a homeless services provider until January, when the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, burned down the facility where he was working.
“It displaced me,” Moore said. “I could have went to a different campus, but I was already transitioning out because my degree wasn’t in mental health, and I had reached my ceiling.”
In addition to mental health, Moore said he has worked in multiple fields, including technology and hospitality. He thought having a multifaceted background was an asset, but “nobody wants you.” So he came to the career fair and applied with LA County Probation.
Some of the job seekers Thursday were looking for work that wasn’t represented. One woman asked Riley if the fair ever had jobs in cybersecurity. Another asked about government positions — neither of which were represented that day.
Wade Williamson was looking for a position in information technology.
“It seems kind of rough right now from what I see online and in person,” said Williamson, a job seeker from Norwalk who was laid off after 12 years last month from an IT job in El Segundo and was at the job fair for a system administrator position.
He’s applied for about 25 jobs but hasn’t landed anything so far.
At the career fair, Williamson handed out resumes to forward to the companies’ IT teams, “but it’s unlikely that will pan out to anything,” he said. Still, he said, “it was great to have the opportunity to network and speak to recruiters in person.”
The career fair, he said, “was a good opportunity.”