SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : REPORTS FORM THE FIELD : For Fastest Job Growth, Inland Empire May Reign
At the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, deep in the Inland Empire, several hundred Lockheed employees may one day escape the high-priced housing, snarled traffic and crime-ridden streets of Los Angeles.
Like a growing number of other Los Angeles-area industries and businesses, Lockheed hopes to expand operations to this sparsely developed region of Southern California where land and labor costs are lower and, to many, the quality of life is better.
The employment and housing surge in the Inland Empire is part of a trend that began in the last decade, and if economic forecasters are right, its momentum will continue through the 1990s.
“The Riverside/San Bernardino area is universally acknowledged as the hot growth area in Southern California,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “It will become in the 1990s what Orange County was in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Indeed, these two counties, sprawling in the basin below the San Bernardino Mountains, almost certainly will be among the fastest-growing job machines in Southern California in the 1990s. This year, the two-county region may rival Orange County as a source of new jobs, according to economic forecasts.
Lockheed’s proposed commercial aircraft maintenance center at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino County would employ 970 workers by 1994, for example. And its officials anticipate little trouble in recruiting them.
“The further east you go from Los Angeles, the cheaper the land, consequently the more affordable housing is available . . . and the less traffic congestion you are going to run into,” said Craig Bramley, vice president for Human Resources at Lockheed Aircraft Service Co.
The Riverside-San Bernardino area will add 20,000 jobs this year, a growth rate of 3.1%, according to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. By comparison, growth in Orange County--the land of the Magic Kingdom and sun-drenched beaches--has slowed considerably. Its 2.2% projected growth rate could mean 26,000 new jobs this year, Kyser said.
Although Los Angeles County will have only a 1.8% employment increase for 1990, it still ranks first in the number of people employed. With 75,000 new non-farm jobs predicted for this year, Los Angeles County’s job base will expand to 4.3 million workers.
Those statistics translate to a diversity of opportunities throughout Southern California. For example, prospects look good in the legal, architectural and engineering professions, economists say. Another bright spot is commercial aircraft production. McDonnell Douglas plans to add 3,000 jobs this year, both in manufacturing and engineering, spokesman Don Hanson said.
“There are shortages of some engineering specialists, highly skilled toolmakers, jig and fixture builders,” he said.
Employees qualified in many professional and technical health care occupations also will be in demand, according to Patti Ossen, senior vice president of Human Resources at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.
The Los Angeles economy in particular will continue to get support from traditional fields, such as the motion picture and television industry. In the next decade, Los Angeles even may surpass New York as the largest employment hub--not only for entertainment but also for the media and communications industry, predicted Mark Baldassare, pollster and professor of sociology at UC Irvine.
Yet the Southern California job market also faces uncertainties. The doubtful health of the aerospace industry, an expensive and sluggish real estate market and the impact of tougher clean-air proposals could put a damper on job creation.
Even in fast-expanding Riverside and San Bernardino, there is no assurance that job growth will be well balanced.
“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that just because people move out there, there is going to be a well-diversified, robust economy that can employ all kinds of people in all different occupations,” said UCLA economist David G. Hensley.
Terry Moore, San Bernardino County economic development executive, predicted that the area’s growth would be propelled by small and medium-sized firms.
For instance, business service companies--such as computer and data processing operations and temporary employment agencies--will be among the companies popping up in the Riverside-San Bernardino basin in coming years.
Construction employment, which led Riverside County’s job growth in the last couple of years, will continue to flourish locally, according to Andre Richards, development specialist with the county’s Economic Development Agency. So will wholesale trade and such services as finance, insurance and real estate, he said.
Riverside and San Bernardino are not the only areas where spirited job growth is taking place.
Ventura County appears to be emulating the Orange County of old, attracting high technology firms and boasting a more pricey image than the Inland Empire. Leading the region in personal income growth, Ventura County will rival growth rates inland, increasing its employment an estimated 3.6% this year, but from a much smaller base of 229,900 jobs.
“Ventura is physically a small version of Orange County,” said Phillip Vincent, an economist and vice president at First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles.
Clearly, as Orange County is filling up, its growth is slowing down. As in Los Angeles, many employers are avoiding the area in favor of lower costs elsewhere, ironically the reason many went to Orange County in its heyday.
James L. Doti, director of business forecasting at the Chapman College Center for Economic Research in Orange County, forecasts just 17,900 new jobs in the county this year. Doti’s forecast calls for fewer new jobs than Kyser’s, and a substantial decline from past growth. (In 1984, 77,000 jobs were created in the county.)
Doti attributes the change to weakness in the defense and construction industries and “an ongoing exodus of manufacturing firms from Orange County to the Inland Empire, or to other parts of the country, or around the world.”
The manufacturing sector “will be in a recession in Orange County in 1990,” Doti said. “We’ll actually be losing employment compared to the earlier year.” He forecasts a decrease of 2% in manufacturing employment--from 328,000 to 322,000 on average for the year.
As some opportunities decline, others may expand. Doti predicts growth in research and development work, particularly in aerospace. Also, the county’s location on the Pacific may lead to more high tech, biotechnology and export-import-related production.
JOB FORECAST FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Growth County 1984 2010 1984-2010 Los Angeles 4,053,000 5,392,200 1,339,200 Orange 1,048,000 1,718,800 670,800 San Bernardino 325,000 785,400 460,400 Riverside 247,000 626,500 379,500 Ventura 213,000 365,600 152,600
Source: Southern California Assn. of Governments
