O.C. Moves Up Two Rungs on Income Ladder
The Los Angeles area still may be a glamour capital, but as a place to make money, Orange County is looking better.
In an analysis released Wednesday by UCLA, Orange County edged up two slots to rank 25th among 318 U.S. urban areas in personal income two years ago. Los Angeles ranked 100th.
The analysis, part of a quarterly UCLA report, found that the county’s per capita personal income was $32,541 in 1998, up 5.9% from a year earlier when it ranked 27th.
A decade ago, however, the county ranked 14th in the nation.
Per capita income for the entire U.S. was $27,203 in 1998, the most recent year for which federal figures are available.
Although the personal income of Los Angeles County residents climbed 4.8% to $26,773 from the previous year--before taking inflation into account--the area’s national ranking dropped sharply because earnings climbed faster elsewhere across the country. In 1997, the county ranked 76th among the nation’s urban areas and, in 1990, it was in 36th place.
The personal income figures mainly include employee wages, interest earnings and profits from investments and exercised stock options.
Tom Lieser, executive director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said the declining rankings reflect Los Angeles County’s failure to fully recover from the loss in the early 1990s of thousands of jobs providing middle-class wages in the aerospace and finance industries. He said many of the new jobs created during the Los Angeles area’s economic recovery have been low-wage, especially compared with the jobs produced in the technology-rich Bay Area.
Lieser said the entertainment industry, high-technology and other industries continue to produce high-paying positions in Los Angeles, too, but “we’ve lost a big chunk out of the middle” of the wage scale.
Lieser joined previous analysts in warning that the shortage of middle-class jobs, combined with the high cost of housing in Los Angeles, point to growing hardship for many people and the possibility of rising social tensions. He said there is a pressing need for construction of new apartments, “but it’s not being built in the areas that need it.”
While the UCLA analysis is based on 1998 data, a study of 3,000 counties nationwide released last month indicates that Southern California has since lost a lot of ground. Orange County, the most affluent area in the Southland, was 90th overall this year with per capita income of $34,035, according to the study by the Washington, D.C., market research firm Woods & Poole Economics. Income per capita in that report consisted of earnings, wages and salaries, property income and rental income.
A key reason that personal incomes in California counties lag those east of the Mississippi is that the state is home to nearly one-third of the nation’s immigrants, who tend to be younger and earn less money than longer-term residents.
In much of the rest of California, the personal income levels are far higher, according to the UCLA report. The San Francisco area--including San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties--maintained its No. 1 ranking. Its per capita personal income was $45,199, up 5.8% from the year before.
Santa Clara County, including San Jose and surrounding Silicon Valley communities, stayed in fourth place. Its personal income level was $40,828, up 7.5%.
Also relatively high-ranking were Ventura County, in 58th place, with personal income averaging $28,711, and San Diego County, in 78th place, with personal income averaging $27,657.
But the Inland Empire, consisting of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where the personal income level was $21,300, up 5.2% from the year before, received a No. 272 ranking. Lieser explained that in the Inland Empire, as in Los Angeles County, many of the new jobs have been low- or moderate-paying blue-collar positions.
The personal income analysis accompanied a new economic assessment by the UCLA Anderson Forecast predicting that the state’s economic recovery will remain on track over the next couple of years. UCLA’s new quarterly forecast predicts that California’s unemployment rate, which was 5% in May, will average 4.8% this year and 4.6% in both 2001 and 2002.
The forecast also predicts a pickup in new home construction this year along with gains in personal income and consumer spending in 2000 that will be strong, but somewhat lower than 1999 levels.
