California, Here They Come--Up to 7 Million by 2000

California’s golden image will shine in the 1990s through smog, traffic congestion and high housing costs, attracting 5 million to 7 million newcomers to vie for the more than 3 million new jobs created by the year 2000, a new study concluded.

But such continuing growth will require an even greater dedication to planning for the problems created by the surge of jobs and people, according to a report on California’s economy in the 1990s conducted by the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

“People are still voting with their feet, and California is winning their vote,” the study by the private, independent research organization stated.

The state will continue to grow faster than the nation as a whole in terms of increase in population, jobs and wages.

The San Diego, Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley regions will be the state’s fastest growers in every category, while the Los Angeles Basin--defined as Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial counties--will grow slightly below the state average. The San Francisco Bay Area will record the lowest growth of the state’s major regions, the report said.

But growth in income and spending will require improved worker productivity in the 1990s as opposed to the 1980s, when such growth was brought about by large increases in the labor force, the study said.

“California continues to face the challenges of providing sufficient investment in the state’s human and physical capital to maintain the state’s competitive position,” the report said. In particular, California may face a mismatch between the skills required by the jobs of the future and those possessed by a labor pool that is increasingly composed of recent immigrants.

California also must face the challenge created by the decentralization of its jobs and housing, which has spawned traffic congestion and air pollution.

Failure to deal with such issues “will not stop California’s job and population increases much in the 1990s--failure will only make life for all Californians less pleasant,” the study said.

In fact, the state’s attractiveness is rendering the various no-growth measures of recent years ineffective, said Stephen Levy, the report’s primary author and the director of the center. Population growth may slow compared to the whopping 2 1/2 million residents that California added during the past four years, but the state’s growth rate is still expected to be double the national average, he said.

“The choice is not between growth and no growth,” Levy said. “The choice is between planned, well-managed and organized growth, and growth that results in a declining quality of life.

“We have a choice in how to deal with difficult issues of air quality and transportation,” he said. “But we really don’t have much choice about growth.”