Federal contracting in California
$62.0B in federal prime contracts went to work performed in California in FY2025 — 3rd of 56 states and territories, 8.3% of the national total.
Federal figures: USAspending snapshot 2026-09-08, fiscal years 2020–2025 complete plus FY2026 through 2026-05. Obligations in US dollars.
What the money does here
Federal buyers obligated $62.0B on prime contracts performed in California in fiscal 2025, which ranks it 3rd of 56 states and territories and is 8.3% of everything the federal government contracted for that year. That is $1,569 per resident.
Since fiscal 2020 the total has moved +4%, from $59.5B. The largest single buyer is Department of Defense, at $39.2B — 63% of the state's federal total, out of 51 federal agencies that obligated anything here.
Of the sectors broken out here, professional services is the largest in California: $23.8B, or 38.4% of the state's federal spending, having moved +22% since fiscal 2020. The single busiest place of performance is Los Angeles County ($22.8B).
Seven years of federal contracting
Obligations by fiscal year, attributed to the state where the work is performed. Switch between every sector and each break-out on its own, and between full fiscal years and a matched window that makes the current year comparable.
FY2026 is hatched because it is 8 months, not twelve (2025-10 to 2026-05), and its defence figures stop where the Pentagon's 90-day reporting hold begins. It is not comparable to the columns beside it. Across the complete years, FY2020 to FY2025, all sectors obligations moved +4%.
Who buys here
Federal agencies by what they obligated on work performed in California in fiscal 2025.
| Agency | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Department of Defense | 63.2% | $39.2B | |
| Department of Energy | 9.3% | $5.8B | |
| Department of Veterans Affairs | 7.2% | $4.5B | |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration | 6.9% | $4.3B | |
| Department of Homeland Security | 4.9% | $3.0B | |
| Department of Agriculture | 2.4% | $1.5B | |
| General Services Administration | 2.0% | $1.2B | |
| Department of the Interior | 1.3% | $818M | |
| Department of Transportation | 0.7% | $449M | |
| Department of Justice | 0.7% | $410M | |
| Department of State | 0.6% | $366M | |
| Department of Health and Human Services | 0.6% | $349M | |
| All other agencies | 0.2% | $147M |
What they buy
The industries that federal money in California actually lands in, by NAICS code.
| Industry | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology) NAICS 541715 | 14.6% | $9.1B | |
| Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences NAICS 541710 | 9.1% | $5.6B | |
| Aircraft Manufacturing NAICS 336411 | 8.3% | $5.2B | |
| Engineering Services NAICS 541330 | 6.8% | $4.2B | |
| Commercial and Institutional Building Construction NAICS 236220 | 6.4% | $4.0B | |
| Offices of Physicians (except Mental Health Specialists) NAICS 621111 | 4.5% | $2.8B | |
| Search, Detection, Navigation, Guidance, Aeronautical, and Nautical System and Instrument Manufacturing NAICS 334511 | 4.2% | $2.6B | |
| Ship Building and Repairing NAICS 336611 | 3.3% | $2.0B |
Where in the state
Places of performance within California, which is a different question from where the buying office sits.
| County | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles County | 36.8% | $22.8B | |
| San Diego County | 22.3% | $13.8B | |
| Alameda County | 9.5% | $5.9B | |
| Santa Clara County | 6.2% | $3.9B | |
| Sacramento County | 3.2% | $2.0B | |
| Ventura County | 2.9% | $1.8B | |
| Orange County | 2.2% | $1.4B | |
| Kern County | 2.0% | $1.2B |
Who wins here
The largest prime contractors on work performed in California. Companies registered under several entity IDs are summed into one row — the federal data reports each registration separately, which understates large parents three to five times if taken at face value.
| Prime contractor | Share of the state's federal total | Share | Obligated |
|---|---|---|---|
| LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL SECURITY, LLC | 5.8% | $3.6B | |
| NORTHROP GRUMMAN SYSTEMS CORPORATION 10 registered entities combined | 5.5% | $3.4B | |
| THE BOEING COMPANY 2 registered entities combined | 4.6% | $2.9B | |
| QTC MEDICAL SERVICES INC | 4.5% | $2.8B | |
| CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 2 registered entities combined | 3.8% | $2.4B | |
| SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES CORP. | 3.3% | $2.1B | |
| RAYTHEON COMPANY 2 registered entities combined | 3.1% | $1.9B | |
| ECC CONSTRUCTORS LLC | 2.7% | $1.7B |
Prime contracts only. A firm working as a subcontractor to one of these names does not appear, however much of the work it does.
Small business
Of the $35.5B obligated in California over the matched window, $2.3B — 6.4% — went out under a small-business set-aside, against 6.7% nationally. In fiscal 2020 the state's share was 4.2%.
Set-asides are the part of the federal market a small firm can compete in on something other than scale, so the share matters more than the dollars. Open set-aside work in California is listed in the portal.
Open in California right now
Offra is tracking 1,159 open public solicitations in California — federal, state and local. Public record last confirmed Oct 1, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC.
Busiest industries
- Commercial & institutional building construction15
- Architectural & engineering services12
- Lessors of real estate11
- Aerospace product & parts manufacturing9
- Management & technical consulting services7
- Building equipment contractors5
Where the notices come from
- OpenGov (multi-state)378
- Cal eProcure (California)331
- Los Angeles268
- SAM.gov111
- San Francisco71
How to read this page
- The two halves measure different things.
- Everything above the live section is federal prime-contract obligations from USAspending, attributed to the state where the work is performed. The live counts are our own open-notice corpus, where a federal notice is filed against the contracting office's address, because that is what the source publishes — only about a third of SAM.gov notices carry a usable place of performance. The two are not interchangeable and are deliberately not added together.
- Obligations, not award value.
- What was actually put on contract in the window, including modifications to older awards. A negative figure is not an error: it means money came back off existing contracts faster than new money went out.
- Prime contracts only — so infrastructure money is largely invisible.
- Award types A–D. Grants, loans and direct payments are excluded because they are not contracts. Most federal infrastructure money reaches contractors as grants or formula funds to state agencies, which then let their own contracts; none of that is a federal prime contract and none of it appears here. That is a fact about the measure, not about the spending.
- Fiscal 2026 is 8 months, and its defence figures stop early.
- The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withhold contract actions from federal reporting for 90 days. Nothing in the data marks it — a recent month simply shows almost no defence activity, which reads exactly like a collapse and is not one. This snapshot treats the record as complete only through 2026-05, a boundary found by reading the monthly defence series and locating where it falls off a shelf rather than by counting days. Use the like-for-like window on the chart to compare the current year to its predecessors.
- Contractors are rolled up; subcontractors are absent.
- Federal data reports one row per registered entity, not per company, so a large parent appears several times. Those rows are summed here. Subcontract work is not reported at this level at all.
- The figures move after publication.
- Recent months revise upward for weeks as modifications post, so the most recent year on this page is provisional by construction. Snapshot taken 2026-09-08.
The wider federal picture — which agencies moved, which contractors arrived, and what changed nationally — is in the federal contracting study. Every state's open-tender count is on the coverage map.
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