LOS ANGELES, CA – Los Angeles ranked 168th out of 182 U.S. cities in WalletHub’s 2026 safest-cities ranking, a comparison of 41 safety indicators that the personal finance company published Oct. 19.
WalletHub said the ranking looked at threats that range from public health and natural disasters to financial harm, all of which Americans weigh when they consider moving to a different city. The indicators include traffic fatalities and assaults per capita, the unemployment rate and the share of residents without health insurance.
Los Angeles scored low in three categories: Home & Community Safety, Natural-Disaster Risk and Financial Safety.
How the ranking was built
WalletHub compared 182 cities across the 41 indicators. Each metric was scored on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing the safest result.
The indicators were grouped into the three categories in which Los Angeles scored low. Home & Community Safety, Natural-Disaster Risk and Financial Safety each combine several of the individual measures, from assault and traffic-death rates to unemployment and insurance coverage.
The ranking is a product of WalletHub’s own methodology. It is not an official count from a government agency.
Juneau tops the national list
Juneau, Alaska, ranked as the safest city in the country, partly because of the lowest murder rate and the lowest pedestrian fatality rate among the cities compared.
The five safest cities were Juneau; Warwick, Rhode Island; Overland Park, Kansas; Burlington, Vermont; and South Burlington, Vermont.
At the other end of the list, the five least safe cities were Philadelphia, Memphis, Baltimore, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Irvine is top Southern California city
Fremont, in the San Francisco Bay Area, was the highest-ranked California city, placing 14th nationally. Irvine, in Orange County, was the highest-ranked Southern California city at 28th.
Santa Rosa placed 29th, one spot behind Irvine. Los Angeles was among the cities in the lower part of the 182-city list.
LAPD reports lower homicide totals
The ranking appeared alongside the Los Angeles Police Department’s own figures for 2025. The city of Los Angeles published the LAPD’s 2025 crime data report, which recorded 230 homicides in 2025, down from 284 in 2024.
That works out to a homicide rate of 5.9 per 100,000 residents. The LAPD had announced in a news release that Chief Jim McDonnell would present the 2025 citywide crime data.
Mayor Karen Bass has also pointed to the trend. In a statement from her office, Bass said reports show Los Angeles is on pace for its lowest homicide total in about 60 years and that the city will keep using comprehensive safety strategies.
Different measures, different results
The WalletHub ranking and the LAPD’s report measure different things. The LAPD’s figures cover crimes recorded in the city, while the WalletHub list blends 41 indicators that also cover natural-disaster risk, financial security and health insurance coverage.
According to initial reports, the LAPD also recorded 899 shooting victims in 2025, compared with 981 in 2024. The same reports put traffic-collision deaths in Los Angeles at 290 in 2025, compared with 309 in 2024.
Unemployment is one of the indicators
Unemployment is among the economic measures in the ranking’s Financial Safety category. According to initial reports, the California Employment Development Department put the Los Angeles County seasonally adjusted unemployment rate at 4.8% in September 2026, down from a revised 5.0% in August and from 5.6% a year earlier.
WalletHub’s published ranking does not break out how each individual indicator affected Los Angeles’s overall position in the information available Tuesday.
No city response to the ranking
As of Oct. 20, Mayor Bass, the LAPD and other city offices had not publicly responded to the WalletHub ranking.
The 2025 LAPD homicide figures remain the most recent official citywide crime numbers cited in the available information.
