| Los Angeles, California, has long been the economic growth engine lifting Southern California residents to an ever-higher standard of living. However, beginning in the late 1980s, structural, economic, and policy changes and events combined to undermine the region's general prosperity and drive the area's disadvantaged deeper into poverty. Federal funding decisions and defense cutbacks caused a dramatic reduction in manufacturing jobs. Los Angeles County lost approximately 119,400 jobs in aerospace and defense from a peak in February 1988 to January 1994. Overall, Los Angeles County lost 530,000 jobs throughout the 1990s. The 1992 civil disturbance and 1994 Northridge earthquake had significant impacts on the business community resulting in further economic dislocation.
The University of Southern California (USC) hopes to help reverse this by forming a Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC). USC's COPC projects are all located within the federally designated Los Angeles Empowerment Zone, which struggles under pervasive poverty, unemployment, and general distress. The COPC's outreach efforts to the distressed communities in Los Angeles include activities in economic development, education and training, housing, and neighborhood revitalization.
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