Angelenos Drop in U.S. Ranking of Income Levels
The Los Angeles area still may be a glamour capital, but as a place to make money, its status is fading fast.
An analysis released Wednesday by UCLA business analysts ranked Los Angeles County only 100th among 318 U.S. urban areas in personal income. It found that the county’s per capita personal income was $26,773 in 1998, the most recent year for which federal figures are available.
Although the personal income of Los Angeles County residents climbed 4.8% from the year before--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 they “are not being built in the areas that need it.”
In much of the rest of California, the personal income levels are far higher. The San Francisco area--including San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties--maintained its No. 1 ranking nationally. 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%.
In Southern California, Orange County led the way, in 25th place, up from 27th the year before, but down from 14th in 1990. Its per capita personal income was $32,541 in 1998, up 5.9% from the year before.
It was followed by 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, was far back in the rankings at No. 272. Its per capita personal income was $21,300, up 5.2% from the year before. 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 rankings were part of a new quarterly assessment of the California economy by the UCLA Anderson Forecast. The UCLA analysts predicted that California’s unemployment rate, which was 5% in May, will average 4.8% this year and decline to 4.6% in both 2001 and 2002.
