More Southern Californians Cross County Borders to Work

Because home prices soared and once-far-flung suburbs became economic hubs, more Southern Californians are living in one county and working in another, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.

Meanwhile, on a national scale, established metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, are drawing a smaller proportion of their work force from outlying areas, reflecting “a continued decentralization of workplaces as well as residences,” said Census Bureau analyst Phillip Salopek, who authored the study.

The new data details what urban planners say is a national trend toward so-called satellite cities--former suburbs that, over the years, have developed a job base and work force of their own.

But locally, the study also underscores the ever-lengthening state of the Southern California commute. Although the vast majority of workers still have their homes and jobs in the same county, the size of that majority dwindled by 2% to 7% in the region during the past decade.

“There has been more inter-county travel, not just in our region, but across the nation,” said Ralph Cipriani, a transportation specialist with the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Much of the trend locally, he said, stems from the steep increase in home prices in Los Angeles County and the economic development of Orange County--movements that fueled explosive growth in the 1980s in the Inland Empire and Ventura County.

But he also attributed the changes to structural shifts in the economy.

“As we get further away from a manufacturing economy to one that is more service-oriented,” Cipriani said, “people are spending less and less time at stationery locations, and more time traipsing around the region to earn a living.”

Added Rocky Tarantello, a Newport Beach real estate consultant and an associate professor of land economics at USC: “The jobs are in one area, and the affordable housing is in another. So people are stuck with the commute, like it or not.”

According to the Census, Los Angeles County remains the dominant economic force in Southern California, with more jobs and more workers than any other county.

The number of people both working and residing in the county increased by about 22% during the past 10 years. Nine-tenths of its 4,344,614 workers--more than 3.8 million people--lived in the county in 1990. Of those who commuted from outlying areas, the majority--about 203,000 workers--were Orange County residents.

But proportionally, the county’s magnetism as an economic center appears to have flagged during the decade. In 1980, for instance, the county drew 17% of its workers from surrounding counties, the Census showed. By 1990, that share had dropped to 15.9%.

Cipriani and others said that loss reflects a diffusion of employment in job markets nationwide. For instance, the proportion of workers commuting to outlying counties has been increasing steadily since 1960, the Census reported, from 14.5% that year to 23.9% by 1990.

In Washington, D.C, the percentage of out-of-county workers dropped from 28.8% to 23.4% during the 1980s, a loss of 5 percentage points even as commuting into the district reached record heights. Other counties that lost ground included New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and the counties that encompass Boston and Detroit.

Locally, about four out of five workers in the region live in the county where they work. But those numbers dwindled slightly for every county during the past decade.

In Orange County, for example, 86% of the workers were residents in 1980; 10 years later, that percentage had dropped to 81%.

Riverside County also saw a dramatic drop, from 88% in 1980 to 83% at last count. San Bernardino dropped from 87.5% 10 years ago to 81% now.

And 89% of Ventura County’s workers lived within the county, down from 96% in 1980.

At the same time, the statistics reflected the growth of Orange County as an economic force and the boom in affordable housing in the suburbs north of Los Angeles.

Between 1980 and 1990, for example, the number of people working in Orange County grew by 44%, with increasing numbers of workers driving from the Inland Empire. Riverside County, for instance, was sending about 21,000 workers a day into Orange County in 1980, the Census showed. By 1990, its contribution had more than doubled, to more than 49,000.

Meanwhile, to the north, the number of Ventura County workers living across the county line in northern Los Angeles County skyrocketed during the decade, from 6,835 in 1980 to more than 23,000 now.

Where We Work

Like many established metropolitan areas, Los Angeles is drawing a smaller proportion of its work force from surrounding counties as suburbs become economic hubs in their own right. Here are the percentages of workers commuting to a “main” county:

Main County 1980 1990 % change * New York County, N.Y. 18.80 17.10 -1.70 * Los Angeles County 17.00 15.90 -1.10 * Cook County, Ill. 24.70 26.50 1.80 * San Francisco County 10.00 8.80 -1.20 * Philadelphia County 13.90 10.90 -3.00 * Wayne County, Mich. 19.60 16.60 -3.00 * Suffolk County, Mass. 12.30 11.50 -0.80 * Washington, D.C. 28.80 23.40 -5.40 * Dallas County, Tex. 23.90 27.00 3.10 * Harris County, Tex. 33.50 40.20 6.70

SOURCE: U.S. Census