Census Held No Promise for County's Poor : Economics: Blacks, Latinos and other minorities have been hard hit by growing dependence on tourism and the decline in industrial jobs, data reveals.

By TOM GORMAN

May 18, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

By various measures, the economic disparity in San Diego County between whites and blacks, and between whites and Latinos, increased during the 1980s, according to new census figures that show mounting evidence that the nation’s urban woes have a local stronghold.

Compounding San Diego’s dilemma is a local economy steeped in tourism that disproportionately feeds low-paying service jobs; an influx of immigrants who can only hope to wallow in those jobs; and a woeful shortage of manufacturing jobs to provide a stepladder out of poverty, economists, sociologists and other schooled observers say.

Even as San Diego County looks for ways to pull itself out of its economic malaise, it is on the brink of losing large numbers of the better-paying jobs--witness just this month the threatened relocation of Convair to Arizona and the feared loss of thousands of local jobs, and unprecedented faculty cutbacks at San Diego State University.

Political scientists and sociologists say that behind San Diego’s census figures lie an increasingly disenfranchised minority population poised to vent its frustrations.

“It’s what we saw laid out in Los Angeles: displaced people--white, black, Latino--who don’t feel there’s a prospect for meaningful employment, or who don’t feel the political, economic and social systems are working for their benefit,” said Lorn Foster, a political scientist at Pomona College specializing in urban and ethnic politics.

The newest 1990 census figures for San Diego County, released last week, at first blush paint an improving economic picture for the regions compared with 1980.

Household incomes are on the rise, even after adjusting for inflation, and percentage growth is going at a faster clip than California’s as a whole--although the incomes still lag behind the state as a whole.

Local unemployment rates are, by and large, down from where they were in 1980.

And the region’s residents are better educated than a decade ago, suggesting on its face that they are better trained for better jobs. Among San Diego County’s blacks 25 or older, for instance, 41% had some college education and 14% had a college degree or beyond, compared with the 1980 census which showed that 28% of blacks had some college education and 11% had a college degree or beyond.

But the flip side of the census figures paint a different picture, especially when drawn along racial lines:

While unemployment in 1990 among whites in San Diego County was at 5.2%, it stood at 11.3% for blacks, 9.5% for Latinos and 10.2% for American Indians. Specifically among Latino men, the unemployment rate increased to 9.6% from its 1980 level of 9.3%.

The average household income in 1989 for whites was $46,778 in 1990, compared with $30,339 for blacks, $32,677 for Latinos and $34,467 for American Indians.

While 11.3% of the county as a whole lived below poverty levels, 22.5% of Latinos, 21.3% of blacks and 17.4% of American Indians had income below the poverty level. Among black children, 32.8% live in poverty. The percentage of blacks and Latinos living in poverty has increased since 1980.

Among whites, 8.4% lived below poverty levels.

Compared with 1980, the same percentage of whites--43%--were homeowners. But the proportion of black homeowners decreased from 36% to 28%, and the percentage of Latino homeowners dropped from 43% to 38%. Experts note that renters feel less committed to a community than do homeowners.

Overall, the census data on Asian-Americans in the county show a population that is substantially closer to the white population financially.

But taken collectively, the numbers show that the economic disparity between San Diego County’s whites and segments of its ethnic minority population is not shrinking and, on some fronts, is growing more pronounced, experts both locally and elsewhere say.

“The country is going through a huge economic wrenching, and San Diego is worse off than a lot of others,” observed George Grier, a specialist in economic and demographic studies for the Greater Washington Research Center, a nonprofit urban studies center.

“Poverty is rising in the central cities at the same time that it’s declining in the suburbs. And it’s in the cities that most of the minorities live, and the newcomers to America live,” he said.

Making matters worse, he and others note, is the loss of manufacturing jobs that offer pay that could help pull laborers up from poverty.

“So things are getting worse, including in San Diego, and that’s why we can look forward to a long, hot summer,” Grier said. “People need to take heed of the explosion in Los Angeles.”

Marney Cox, a regional economist for the San Diego Assn. of Governments, said the newest census figures illustrate a trend that’s been evident for some time--and bodes ill for not just the region’s minority ethnic population, but for the county as a whole.

“San Diego as a region has been stagnating in its standard of living,” he said. “As a region, we haven’t provided the right type of economic opportunities.”

The problem, Cox said, is that the county’s efforts in developing business and commerce have over-emphasized tourism--an industry that he said might provide a first-blush sense of economic security but falls short in providing a foundation for long-term economic health.

Local governments, he said, have a mind-set for tourism because of its offer of quick money--sales tax, transit occupancy tax, and property tax revenues from tourist-related commercial development.

“Basic sector manufacturing jobs don’t offer you that kind of cash. But what you do get is higher wages and salary which, in the long run, contribute more to the local economy,” Cox said.

The availability of service-level jobs--at the tourist attractions, in the hotel-restaurant industry and the like--”will accommodate job growth, but the kinds of jobs those provide won’t give us the higher standard of living required to overcome some of the problems that L.A. has just seen,” Cox said.

He chided local policy makers for their focus on tourism. “When’s the last time we spent $200 million on a basic sector capital facility similar to what we’ve seen spent for tourism: the convention center, attracting the Super Bowl, the America’s Cup, all those tourist-related activities that generate jobs that don’t pay very much.

“We need to give equal treatment to the basic (manufacturing) sector if we want to encourage high-paying jobs so we can break the stagnation in our standard of living. The payoff will be immeasurably better.”

Political scientist Foster echoes Cox’s observations.

“It’s the low-end manufacturing jobs . . . that make it possible for minority group members to move into the middle class, even more so than opportunities to advance in education,” he said.

The obvious challenge to local leaders, Foster said, “is to began a real conversation between government, labor and business in terms of making critical choices: about which industries will be successful in San Diego, and to create an environment in which they can prosper.

“(San Diego) Mayor (Maureen) O’Connor and the county Board of Supervisors have to take a serious look at what to do in terms of Convair, for instance. Can the city and county come up with some sort of tax relief to keep Convair here, or cooperate in job training so people aren’t moved from $18-an-hour jobs to $6-an-hour jobs?

“San Diego has to be satisfied with incremental growth. It can’t get grandiose and create 10% more manufacturing jobs. Just look at 3% to 5% a year, and that’s something policy makers in San Diego County can do.”

Not that the city hasn’t tried--or successfully weathered bad times in the past.

Lee Grissom, president of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, remembers 1961, when 47,000 of San Diego’s 312,000 workers were employed at General Dynamics--and how, that year, 22,000 General Dynamics employees were laid off. By 1965, General Dynamics’ work force had dropped to 12,000.

“At that time, San Diego’s economy was a one-legged stool,” Grissom said. “We were a company town for the Department of Defense. Since then, we’ve seen measurable, substantial change in the quality of San Diego’s economy.”

It was in the wake of that experience, he notes, that San Diego fought for a local campus for the University of California, a magnet to attract biotechnology and other high-end industry. Increased tourism, too, became a goal to add balance to the local economy.

Grissom and others say the future of San Diego’s economic prosperity, one that will close the ranks between the more affluent white population and its minority populations, rests in capitalizing on its location alongside the Mexican border, and on the Pacific Rim.

“When I look out 30 years from now, I see a TwinPorts airport which will be an investment magnet for entrepreneurs and companies from all over the world. As other airports reach their capacity, we’ll be a remarkable, unique economic region.”

Grissom also calls for more minority-owned and minority-managed businesses and programs to give lower-income neighborhoods relief from drugs and crime.

According to the census, a disproportionate number of children in the minority populations live in poverty, and, according to sociologists, grow up disillusioned by the world around them.

“We’re concerned about gangs now? It’s going to get worse,” warned Rae Lesser Blumberg, a UC San Diego sociologist who specializes in Third World economics.

“We’re getting more and more kids growing up now in poverty, and what are their options? We’re disinvesting our children. We have an increasing proportion of young kids in San Diego living in poverty, joining gangs, and experiencing high unemployment.

“Because of that, we’re going to have more flash points in the future, as these kids grow up. Other things besides Rodney King can touch this off.”

Some experts say a fundamental way for minority groups--especially blacks--to improve their financial picture is to reverse the trend toward the increasing number of single-parent households, especially those headed by women living on public assistance.

But even that solution, they say, requires an improving economy in the first place.

“If you look at the income levels of dual-earning couples, where both spouses work full-time, there’s very little difference in the level of income between whites and African-Americans,” said John Weeks, a sociologist at San Diego State University. “What differences there are is probably attributable to racial discrimination.

“The reason there’s this economic disparity is because such a very large fraction of African-American households are headed by females with children, and that’s true here in San Diego.

“If males were in a position to get jobs that paid well enough for them to support those families, situations would improve,” Weeks said. “There have been bigger gains among African-American families in the Midwest, where there are union-based manufacturing jobs.”

Is education a critical factor? The new census figures show that 13% of blacks 25 or older dropped out of high school, compared with 9% of whites.

Some experts, like Sandag’s Cox, say if higher-end jobs were locally available, then students would pursue higher education to get those jobs. But for now, many young people lack that incentive because they see their future in service jobs that require little education.

Besides, said John Hambleton, an economist at San Diego State University, “Economists don’t see a major correlation between years of schooling and job pay. Language skills may be more important than years in school.”

That problem is becoming more evident in San Diego County, where in 1990, 25% of the people 5 or older speak a language other than English when they’re at home, according to the census. In 1980, the figure was 18%.

Many experts say the problems haunting San Diego ultimately must be addressed through state economic and national domestic policy.

“We’ve reached a crisis in government funding,” said Weeks, the SDSU sociologist. “The government was willing to bail out the savings and loans, and now it has to bail out the rest of society.”

Weeks said he can empathize with those outside the economic loop. He was one of 100 tenured faculty members at San Diego State University who last week were notified they stood to lose their jobs because of state budget cutbacks.

“After having been here for 18 years, I now know exactly what the people in South Central L.A. were feeling. I never knew that frustration until the other night, when I got the word.”

Ethnicity and the 1990 Census

EDUCATION (among residents 25 and older)

High School Some Bachelors Degree Dropout College or More American Indian 17% 37% 12% Asian/Pacific Islander 10% 30% 28% Black 13% 41% 14% Latino 19% 23% 9% White 9% 35% 27% UNEMPLOYMENT RATES Overall Male Female American Indian 10.2% 12.6% 6.9% Asian/Pacific 6.6% 7.0% 6.1% Black 11.3% 11.2% 11.5% Latino 9.5% 9.6% 9.4% White 5.2% 5.5% 4.9% Overall 6.1% 6.4% 5.8%

AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOMES, 1989

Amount

American Indian: $34,467

Asian/Pacific Islander: $42,259

Black: $30,339

Latino: $32,677

White: $46,778

Overall: $44,375

BELOW POVERTY LEVEL

Amount

American Indian: 17.4%

Asian/Pacific Islander: 13.1%