Pilar Guzman has worked for five years in a warehouse that processes luggage arriving from China and bound for the likes of Wal-Mart, Macy's and Kohl's.

She's made minimum wage for the entire stint and arrives each day not knowing whether she'll get called into work the next. One recent day, she taped 12,000 cardboard boxes.

"The work is very repetitive, and people tend to get hurt," she said in Spanish through a translator.

Guzman is on the front lines of the fastest-growing industry in one of the fastest-growing job markets in California: the Inland Empire. Once the poster child for the woes of the housing crash, the eastern spoke of the Los Angeles metro area has rebounded swiftly over the last two years.

The fastest-growing sector has been the logistics industry — the truck drivers, inventory managers and warehouse workers serving an increasingly global and digital economy.

The sector created 1 in 5 jobs in the Inland Empire last year. That figure doesn't include the huge proportion of warehouse workers supplied by temporary employment agencies, which typically offer less job security and fewer benefits.

Los Ángeles Times