One of the advantages of top-tier MBA degrees is their portability – candidates from top schools often have the opportunity to work in any city they want. For certain industries such as technology, a location like Silicon Valley is synonymous with the industry and is regarded as “the place to be” in terms of career growth. But what if there was a way to analyze what U.S. cities have to offer MBA students?
Utilizing data provided by MBAs across the nation, we are able to analyze metrics such as average compensation, the most common functional roles and industries, and the companies that hire a large number of MBAs in any major city in the United States. Twelfth up in our analysis: Los Angeles, California.
(This entry is part of a series exploring such measures for various cities. You can find our other entries in the series here: Denver, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.)
According to the sources Bungalow, Numbeo, and Apartment List, the average cost of living in Los Angeles is approximately $3650/month, with the median rent of a one-bedroom being $2575/month. In terms of the average post-MBA salary in this city, the data indicates it is around $120,394 while the average post-MBA compensation is $168,980.
City ranks for three separate measures out of a total of 55 evaluated cities
When looking at the top ten industries of MBAs living in this city, Consulting leads the pack by a large margin with 26.1% of MBAs belonging to this industry, followed by Arts, Media, News, Sports, & Entertainment and Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce with 16.3% and 7.8%, respectively. Real Estate, Consumer Products, and Pharma, Medical Devices, & Biotech trail at fourth, fifth, and sixth place with 6.7%, 6.0%, and 5.7%. This leaves Investment Management (4.6%); Hospitals, Medicine, & Healthcare Services (3.5%); Automotive, Transportation, & Logistics (2.8%); and Commercial Banking (2.1%) finishing off the list. Our other category, which constituted almost one quarter of our data, included industries such as Private Equity, Retail, and Accounting & Audit.
Now that it has been established what the popular industries for business students in Los Angeles are, let’s take a look at the functions they are hired for. Consulting comes in first again with 25.4% followed by Corporate Strategy with 11.3% and Marketing with 9.2%. Corporate Finance and Product Management take fourth and fifth place with 6.7% and 5.7%. Sales takes the sixth position with 4.6% while Operations claims the seventh position with 4.2%. Analytics & Data Science and Business Development rounds out the list with 3.5% each while the Other category encapsulates 25.8%.
You may be wondering which employers are hiring for these MBA functions. According to the data, the top 5 employers are the Walt Disney Company (5.3%), Bain & Company (3.5%), L.E.K. Consulting (3.5%), Mattel (3.5%), and Amgen (2.8%).
However, when specifically looking at the top employers for the Consulting Industry, Bain & Company has 13.5%, L.E.K Consulting has 13.5%, and PwC Advisory has 10.8% of all the MBAs in our dataset from this industry living in Los Angeles. Trailing behind them is Accenture and Deloitte Consulting with 6.8% each. In contrast, Arts, Media, News, Sports, & Entertainment—the next most common industry— has its top employers as the Walt Disney Company with 32.6%, NBC Universal and Paramount Pictures Corporation with 10.9% each, Blizzard Entertainment with 6.5%, and 21st Century Fox with 4.3%. Likewise, Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce has a different set of top employers with ADP, Microsoft, and Riot Games having 9.1% each, and Amazon and Blackine tying for second place with 4.5% each.
The last question asked was which business schools have the most alumni working in this city. Unsurprisingly, the University of California – Los Angeles Anderson School of Management comes in first with the alumni making up 26.9% of the data. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business comes in second and makes up 14.1%. This is followed by University of Southern California Haas School of Business with 9.5%, Harvard Business School with 6.7%, and Columbia Business School with 4.6%.
MBAs in Los Angeles – City Guide:
Are you interested in learning more about MBAs in other US cities? Continue checking out the RelishCareers Blog, where we will continue posting information about popular cities for business students. Candidates can also sign up for an account through RelishCareers and registrants will be informed of all upcoming blog posts through email.