Orange County’s population will pass 3.5 million in 2040—and many residents may be over 120 years old. Every age cohort but 65-plus are leaving OC by some measure, one of the “pressure points” cited in the 17th Annual 2017 Community Indicators Report, a survey of quality of life in the county, presented last week.
Children’s health, a lack of “middle-skill workers,” and the cost of housing were cited as other pressure points.
“Tough place to be poor,” said co-author Randy Barth of THINK Together, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit focused on education.
A family income of $84,000 now qualifies as low income here. A worker must take home $27 an hour to pay average rent, and the median single-family home is a county record of $745,000.
But life here is hardly all bad.
There’s robust job and income growth, a low 3.5% unemployment, and some of the lowest crime rates and highest graduation rates in the U.S.
“We’re a hotbed of innovative ideas, an economic engine that drives Southern California,” said Business Council President Lucy Dunn.
But how to keep those innovators, the millenials and Gen Xers here?
“We’re losing millennials at the second fastest rate in the country,” said Steve PonTell, whose La Jolla Institute advises communities on ways to be economically competitive. “If you can’t bend that curve, you know what your destiny will be.”
The 74-page report was presented to an Orange County Forum luncheon gathering in Irvine and is available online at https://www.ocgov.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=64553.
–Pete Weitzner
