Finding · updated October 5, 2026
LA's 311 falls off a cliff every weekend
LA files about 2.4× more 311 requests on weekdays than weekends — a 58% weekend drop, measured over 181 days.
Los Angeles doesn't complain evenly. Sort 181 days of MyLA311 requests by day of week, and a cliff appears at the weekend. On a typical weekday the city fields about 8,334 service requests; on a typical weekend day, about 3,465 — a 58% drop, or roughly 2.4× more activity Monday through Friday than on Saturday and Sunday.
| weekday | median requests | days sampled |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 8,776 | 25 |
| Tuesday | 8,334 | 26 |
| Wednesday | 8,394 | 26 |
| Thursday | 7,412 | 26 |
| Friday | 6,170 | 26 |
| Saturday | 3,164 | 26 |
| Sunday | 3,766 | 26 |
The busiest day is Monday (median 8,776); the quietest is Saturday (median 3,164). The pattern is almost certainly about who is working, not what's wrong: the categories that dominate LA's 311 — bulky-item and illegal-dumping pickups, graffiti removal — are city crews and residents acting on a weekday rhythm, not emergencies that pause on Sunday.
This is why the LA Civics daily brief never says “311 up 40% since yesterday” off a raw count. A Saturday will always look like a collapse and a Monday like a surge against the day before. We compare each day with the median of the same weekday over recent weeks, so the brief measures news instead of the weekly calendar.