In Marin County Plenty, a Poverty of Service Workers
The Sequoia Theater here needs workers.
So does the Summer House furniture store, which this week had three help-wanted notices for full-time sales assistants in its front window.
Peet’s Coffee & Tea, aromatic hangout for some of this trendy San Francisco suburb’s most richly eccentric characters, announced its chronic employment needs this way: “Now accepting applications for coffee, tea and customer service enthusiasts.”
On a recent balmy afternoon here, the tranquil, numbing kind that deadens ambition, no one jumped up from their lattes and chais to offer themselves up for work.
The boom-economy worker shortage plaguing much of the country has reached new levels here in Marin County, which boasts California’s highest per capita income. All across this land of redwoods, hot tubs and proliferating numbers of cyberjillionaires, the signs in the shop windows are crying for help.
Few answer the call. When they do, it’s generally a long drive away.
Last week, the state Employment Development Department reported that unemployment in California has dropped below 5%, a 30-year low that goes back to Ronald Reagan’s days as governor.
The announcement was not all good news. Pockets of high unemployment still exist in seasonal job agricultural areas such as Imperial (27%) and Tulare (13%) counties. But the lowest of the low was here in Marin, where the 1.7% unemployment rate borders on statistically impossible.
“The conventional economic wisdom was that unemployment couldn’t get below 2%,” said Michael Bernick, director of employment development for the state. Bernick said 1.7% unemployment is the lowest recorded in California since at least 1975, when the state shifted to its current form of record keeping. Only five other large U.S. counties, two in Minnesota and one each in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, have lower numbers.
In fact, the Marin rate--along with similarly low rates in nearby San Mateo (1.8%), Santa Clara (2.7%) and San Francisco (2.9%) counties--is actually a problem that poses longer range economic questions for the Bay Area. In short, the most affluent communities of Northern California have become so rich and so exclusive that they have priced themselves out of the service sector that supports their wealth.
“It sounds like a joke,” said Ted Gibson, chief economist for the California Department of Finance, “but you cannot afford to live in Marin County and be unemployed. If you are seriously unemployed in this and other Bay Area communities, you should seriously seek a lower-cost place to live.”
Lifestyles of the Rich Are Suffering
Many jobs here go unfilled, largely because anyone with enough money to live in Marin County, where the per capita income is nearly $50,000, and small “fixer-upper” cabins sell for more than $1 million, doesn’t need or want a job in the service economy.
“For the past two years it’s been virtually impossible to find employees,” said Chris Stendl, owner of Strawbridge’s Stationery store in Mill Valley. “You can’t hire any of the local kids. Their weekly allowances are bigger than what I can pay them.”
As a result, local business owners here say, the famous Marin County lifestyle has suffered.
“The sad thing is that we can’t give the kind of service the upscale clientele expects,” said David Canepa, 38, co-owner of the Mill Valley Market, a landmark business next to City Hall that has been here under the same family for 70 years. Mill Valley Market, which offers 110 kinds of imported mustards, is the kind of small, expensive grocery where in previous days clerks would help customers pick out fruit and tomatoes.
“Julia Child was here last week to buy her annual case of Mill Valley Kadoda Fig jam,” said Canepa. But the shop owner says the store, which employs 40, has a serious problem filling openings with skilled people. Customers complain they have to wait too long for game and fresh tuna at the delicatessen counter.
Even if it were willing, the working class often can’t find affordable housing close enough to the potential employers to make the trip worthwhile.
“One of the questions we have been asking on a broader level,” said economist Gibson, is where are the service people going to come from in the future? It is awfully hard to lure shop attendants into Mill Valley from northern Sonoma County where the drive is more than an hour.”
Those who own housing in Marin County feel they can be choosy about what jobs they take.
Earlier this week, Mark Rudy, 48, was one of a few people--and the only one who lives in Marin County--in the San Rafael unemployment office operated by the state. Rudy, a business management graduate from Sonoma State University, held several previous jobs as an account executive in local firms, including a Mill Valley building supply company. But he said his computer skills are limited, so he was getting training at the employment center.
Rudy said he was confident he would get a job, mainly because he owns a home in nearby Corte Madera. “Living here already gives me a great advantage,” he said.
Desperate for Service Workers
Marin County is a place where you have to work hard to be unemployed. Kathryn Valencia, a job placement officer in the San Rafael office, said most of her clients are executives who earned between $75,000 and $300,000 a year. Many are professionals who are looking to change careers.
“I’ve got quite a few attorneys who just really don’t want to do that kind of work anymore,” Valencia said. “These people are willing to downgrade their work and salaries to stay in Marin.” Lately, she said, the average time it takes to find a job for this group is a relatively short three months.
Harder to fill are the service jobs.
Employers have attempted all sorts of inducements. Brian Wilson, co-owner of Sam’s Anchor Cafe in Tiburon, said he now offers membership in a local health club for waiters and waitresses. But he is still two positions short, including a cook’s job that pays $13 an hour. HiTech Burrito, a San Rafael-based company that has 15 branches in the Bay Area, offers a free burrito to anyone who will fill out an employment application.
“I’ve given up looking for someone to work in my shop,” said Dorothy Schubert, a 20-year resident of Marin County who owns the Mill Valley Hat Box, a slightly quirky, upscale hat store on Blithedale Avenue. “When they do accept a job, they usually have to drive so long to get here that they are not dependable.”
Schubert, whose graceful demeanor evokes the image of Mill Valley depicted in the 1970s tongue-in-cheek novel by Cyra McFadden, “The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County,” bemoans the lost spirit of the sleepy valley, nestled between the North Bay and the rugged northern coast.
Mill Valley, she said, is filling up with striving, rich computer nerds. There is uncharacteristic tension in the air.
“The character of the place has changed completely,” Schubert said, looking from under the brim of her large hat to the passing line of traffic. “People fight over parking places now. There are whole lines of cars honking. It’s like road rage has come to Mill Valley.”
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Help Wanted in Marin County
San Francisco’s suburban Marin County leads California in record low unemployment. Famous for its redwoods and hot tub culture, the county is tied for the sixth lowest jobless rate in the United States.
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Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor; State of California, Employment Development Department (preliminary for September); counties outside California unemployment rates for August 1999
