O.C. Growth Has a Downside Too
Orange County’s new economy, with its full employment, growth companies and stock market wealth, has left many lower-income workers stalled and disgruntled with their jobs, a Times Orange County poll has found.
Overall, the county’s employees are far happier than the average U.S. worker, and seven in 10 of its managers and professionals are “very satisfied” at work, the poll found.
Yet attitudes are far different among those with lower echelon jobs and wages too low to enjoy Orange County’s expensive housing and vaunted suburban life. Only four in 10 blue-collar, clerical and sales workers are very satisfied.
The numbers illustrate a nationwide problem after 6 1/2 years of economic expansion, one that has many labor experts worried about the creation of a two-tier, have-and-have-not society.
Although more people are working, wages so far have not taken off. That has kept interest rates down, benefiting business and those wealthy enough for mortgages and stock investments, but has done little for the lower-tier jobholder.
Government wage figures show that mechanics’ pay, for example, is up just 1% from a year ago, while pay for executives went up 7% during that time, said Edward Montgomery, the U.S. Labor Department’s chief economist.
“Overall, people are happy on the job [security] side, but less confident on the wage and promotion side,” Montgomery said.
The Times poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare and Associates, surveyed 600 adult jobholders from Orange County over five days in September. The margin of sampling error was 4 percentage points for the overall group, higher for subgroups.
The participants seemed at first glance to have strong allegiance to their bosses, because 2 in 3 said they are very loyal. Yet more than half would quit rather than move out of the county to stay with their current employer.
“Why would you want to go somewhere else?” said Albert Howe, a 39-year-old Laguna Niguel resident who works long hours wheeling and dealing in California’s soon-to-be-deregulated electricity market.
As a worker for a Kentucky company, Howe, 39, is a full participant in the entrepreneurial economy that is so strong in Orange County.
A University of Chicago graduate with a master’s degree in business administration, he revels in “inventing it as you go along,” and says he and his wife, who also works, are “very comfortable” financially.
That enthusiasm is far harder to find among those with less education and skills.
“I thought about maybe going back to Massachusetts,” said Thomas Rogers, a Boston native living in Garden Grove who has “burned out” on phone soliciting after 20 years in the business.
He struggles to make the rent each month while trying to find a better way to support his family, and is now taking vocational training.
“Honestly, I’m tired of the [telemarketing] business. I’m trying to better myself. I have a wonderful wife and a 2-year-old girl who’s very special. And she’s going to want a lot of things,” Rogers said.
But at 43, without many job skills, the bottom line for Rogers can be grim.
“It’s the same old story,” he says. “ ‘You’re too old.’ ”
The stories of Howe, Rogers and other poll participants are being played out against a backdrop of a speeding Orange County economy. Fueled by high-tech businesses, international trade and tourism, the region in many ways provides an enviable model of job creation for the nation.
Unemployment is 3.5%. Cal State Fullerton researchers expect the number of jobs to rise 13% by 2005. Home prices are rising after years of decline. And Chapman University economists say median family income has risen well above $60,000 a year.
The best of the good news--for those with money to invest--has been the bull market on Wall Street, said Chapman economist Esmael Adibi.
“People in the upper brackets of income have the opportunity to participate in the stock and bond markets. And even if they’re just saving it for retirement and it’s a paper gain, it makes them feel pretty good,” he said.
The reverse, Adibi said, is true for those whose income is too low to play the market.
And because it is so expensive and, many would say, fixated on material goods, Orange County more than most regions embodies the contrast between haves and have-nots.
Only a quarter of its blue-collar workers express much satisfaction with their pay, and half say chances of promotion at their current job is only fair or poor.
“Yes, Orange County is a great place for upper-middle-class, managerial and professional workers . . . those able to ride the wild and wonderful economy,” said Cheryl Katz, co-director of the poll.
“But the blue-collar workers are missing out,” she said. “For them, life is not so wonderful and the workplace is not so wonderful.”
Rogers, the man thinking about going back to Massachusetts, said he made only about $10,000 last year.
“I’ve been all over the country with this telemarketing and I’ve never seen a county that’s so expensive,” he said.
Unable to find any other regular work besides security guard duty at $6 or $8 an hour, he struggles to support his wife, who is working on a high school equivalency program, his 2-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old stepson.
A $12.30-an-hour factory job recently ended when he was let go on the 89th day of a 90-day probation, he said. Unemployment checks barely cover the $780 monthly rent on his two-bedroom apartment. Food, clothing and utilities come out of $350 a month in child support from his stepson’s father.
“It’s a shame that I didn’t get to get all the education I should have. I went into the [military] service and from there I just went out in the business world without any schooling.”
Rogers is taking state-funded training in computerized tool-and-die making. Labor officials warn him, though, that even if he lands a job in that trade, he should expect only $7 or $8 an hour for the first three years.
Times staff writer Marcida Dodson contributed to this story.
