If coworking in Los Angeles continues to grow at its current pace, companies that provide flexible spaces will surpass the leasing activity of the legal, government and insurance sectors by mid-2019, according to a report by CBRE.

The CBRE market report released last week found flexible space providers accounted for 4.4% of office square footage leased in major deals in the first half of 2018, nearly double from the same time last year.

“Flexible space providers have been the primary growth driver within the business services sector,” the report states.

The report comes as flexible space and coworking have become a major force in office leasing activity in Southern California.

Earlier this year, Cushman & Wakefield reported the growth of coworking in Orange County, which now makes up about 680K SF across the coastal market.

In Los Angeles, flexible space accounts for 3.54M SF of office space, according to CBRE.

Los Angeles is the second-hottest flexible space hub nationally, second only to New York, which has 9.2M SF of flexible space, according to CBRE. Chicago ranks third with 2.26M SF of flexible space.

A JLL report on coworking released last week found since 2008, coworking space has grown by 500% in Los Angeles.

“Given its annual growth of 59%, that figure should grow significantly moving forward,” the JLL report found.

The hottest submarkets for flexible space are west Los Angeles and downtown Los Angeles. Hollywood’s coworking scene is also on the rise, according to JLL.

“The growth of the shared economy is showing no signs of slowing, and its impact on the office market is likely to increase for the foreseeable future,” JLL reports.