As I reported here last month, the California Business Roundtable and the Los Angeles Urban League have teamed up to study the effect of regulations on business development in local communities, in particular focusing on job creation.
The organizations hosted a second review of data prepared by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs last Friday at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
The UCLA academics focused this session on the city and county of Los Angeles. In a word, they found the economies of these areas “struggling.”
The data showed that between 1990 and 2010, while job growth increased 23% in the state of California, jobs increased only 8% in Los Angeles. The professors explained since Los Angeles County accounts for 28% of the jobs in the state but only added 11% of the jobs during this period, Los Angeles was “not pulling its weight.”
As indicated in the first session discussing this issue last month, the average jobs gained in the county came at a smaller salary than the average jobs lost. The lost jobs paid more than $74,000; the gained jobs paid under $60,000. The average salary calculations contained CEO salaries as well as worker salaries.
The biggest increase in jobs came in administrative and support services why manufacturing lost many jobs. Apparel manufacturing was the big job loser in the city of Los Angeles.
Studying other academic reviews of job creating mechanisms, the UCLA team cited sources that indicated that tax incentives for business, such as enterprise zones, where less effective in growing the work force than job-training efforts.
At this stage of the study the UCLA team issued the following conclusions:
Los Angeles County is faring less well than the state; the city of Los Angeles is struggling with 100,000 job losses during the period covered; the county center is also struggling, which incudes some of the smaller cities outside the city of Los Angeles and in the center of the county; manufacturing job have been the biggest losers; the higher cost areas of the county are faring better than the poorer areas in job development.
The examination will continue with further examination of data and the promise of suggested remedies to be presented next month in Sacramento.