County’s Migration Tide Flows Out as Job Market Slumps

The year was 1987, and Francine Johnson was living in Louisiana’s Cajun country, without a job. Her home town, Jeanerette, population 5,000, held little promise, so on a whim, the 23-year-old packed her bags and headed west for an unfamiliar region called Orange County.

“In college I had researched areas where companies were growing, and Orange County kept cropping up as a place that was doing well,” said Johnson, now 28, living in Irvine and working for a Costa Mesa advertising company. “I didn’t have a job, but I knew companies were starting their headquarters here and so I was confident I would find something.”

Like Johnson, more than 550,000 people moved to Orange County between 1985 and 1990, most seeking jobs in a region where real estate, construction and defense industries were booming, as they were throughout Southern California. According to a Times computer analysis of 1990 census data, other parts of California sent nearly half the newcomers, followed almost evenly by foreign countries and other sections of the United States.

Sprawling Orange County still had room to grow. Its geographic location was the perfect lure to newcomers who wanted to be close to metropolitan Los Angeles, without facing its smog and overpopulation.

Of the 2.4 million people in Orange County, about 1.8 million had been living here before 1985, according to the analysis. More than 1 million residents are California natives.

Nearly half of the 550,000 newcomers between 1985 and 1990 came from other parts of the state. The remainder is almost evenly divided between migrants from other states--with Texans and Illinoisans leading the pack--and immigrants from other countries, notably Mexico and Vietnam.

“Jobs (were) the big attraction to people because throughout the 1980s our county employment base grew by 45%,” said Mark Baldassare, professor of urban and regional planning at UC Irvine. “It was a time in which people were drawn to the stability offered by suburban employment centers and among the well-known suburban areas was Orange County.”

Domestically, the states that led the migration into Orange County were Texas, with almost 18,000, Illinois with nearly 13,000, and New York with close to 9,000. Mexico and Vietnam led in foreign immigration to the county with about 67,600 and 11,200 emigres, respectively.

But time caught up, and California was not immune to the economic decline of the rest of the country. In late 1990, the state slid into the nationwide economic slump, taking Orange County with it.

Unemployment skyrocketed and tens of thousands of jobs that years ago attracted people to the area have since disappeared.

In reflecting that downturn, more people left Orange County than moved into it since 1990, according to the state Department of Finance’s analysis of driver’s license records. Based upon the records, the analysis estimated that 13,000 more people left the state than moved here in the past two years--the first time the county incurred a net out-migration in nearly 20 years.

No census data was available on the number of people who moved out of Orange County during the boom years of 1985 to 1990. But experts are certain that in-migration exceeded out-migration during that period.

While statistics on who left the area also are not available, demographers and job recruiters say that many were the same ones who raced to the county during its flourishing years.

Take Texans for instance.

Between 1985 and 1990, nearly 18,000 people rushed to Orange County, leaving a Lone Star State that was reeling from oil, construction and banking industries gone bust.

A Texas Exes Assn. Orange County division was set up in the mid-1980s to bring together former students from the University of Texas then settling into the area. The club collapsed about two years ago when many of its members left the region, officials said.

“I guess they just left Orange County altogether,” said John Walker, a member of the Los Angeles Texas Exes chapter. “I’m still trying to find out what happened to that chapter.”

It’s not hard to deduce what has caused the exodus from the county.

“I don’t mean to be redundant, but it’s jobs again,” Baldassare said. “As long as we see job losses, we will continue to see migration out of the county. It’s anyone’s guess right now how long the current downturn will continue.”

Many of the county’s headhunters, who recruit and relocate new employees, predict that the trend will probably continue for two more years. Until the state rebounds, people will most likely gaze elsewhere in search of greener pastures.

“Orange County grew so much between 1985 and 1990 that its growth has probably been sealed--at least for a couple more years,” said Robert J. Hagel, vice president of a relocation service in Irvine.

“But the people will eventually move here again because the county has always been a good place for new companies and businesses to start,” he added.

One of those entrepreneurs who took advantage of the county’s rapid growth in the late 1980s was Nadine Petropoulos, 43, formerly of Chicago.

Petropoulos came to Orange County in 1989 jobless because her husband’s promotion had brought the couple to Southern California. Within weeks of arriving in her new home city of Laguna Niguel, Petropoulos decided that area of the county, with its budding housing industry, needed a home-improvement agency to screen building contractors.

Today, two years after the county’s housing market went sour, Petropoulos’s business continues to be lucrative because people who can’t afford to buy are remodeling their homes instead.

“I’ve done very well in Orange County and cannot complain,” said Petropoulos. “The area is very pretty, the weather is wonderful. And while the county doesn’t have the ambience and sophistication of Chicago, the quality of life here, in my opinion, is better than many other places.”

Tales of a better life were what enticed Maribel Arias, 22, to emigrate legally from Mexico three years ago. Now, slightly disillusioned because she could not find work as an accountant, Arias cautions friends who want to immigrate that life here is not what others have made it seem.

“When I was in Mexico, people from America would come to my small village in big cars with talk that life in America is better and that you can make a lot of money,” said Arias, who works for a Santa Ana-based Latino immigrant activist group. “I know now it’s not that way. If you are not from here and you don’t know anything, it’s going to be the same or worse than when you were in your country.”

But for every discouraged Arias, there are more optimistic immigrants like Marcos Gonzalez, who raves about job opportunities that exist in Southern California.

“My destiny is in California, it is my future,” said Gonzalez, 31, who came to Santa Ana in 1989 as a legal resident. “Life in Mexico is very hard now. It is very difficult to get a job there. There are more opportunities here; you just have to look hard.”

Despite predictions for a net migration loss in coming years, statistics show a steady stream of foreigners moving into the county. For various reasons, experts agree that the trend will remain constant.

Of the 120,950 people who migrated into the county from July, 1990, to July, 1991, more than 86,000 are foreigners, according to the state Department of Finance demographics research unit. Mexico leads other countries by a large margin in this migratory pattern.

“Orange County is still an attractive place to some immigrant groups” because so many of their people have already settled here, said Baldassare of UC Irvine. “And people continue to move here based on information--even if that information is outdated--from others who have been here.”

New Faces

Between 1985 and 1990, more than 250,000 new residents migrated to Orange County from other parts of California. The numbers are estimates based on a sample of households. The top five states and countries where new residents came from: Top States Texas: 17,885 Illinois: 12,601 Arizona: 10,756 New York: 8,808 Colorado: 8,427 Top Countries Mexico: 67,634 Vietnam: 11,192 Korea (South and North): 6,709 Philippines: 5,124 China, Hong Kong, Taiwan: 4,631 Source: U.S. Census