Recession as Role Model
Editor:
I was a recipient of a free ride (and breakfast) at the UCLA Anderson “Orange County Economic Outlook for 2012” earlier this month, so I feel as though I should reciprocate.
I couldn’t think of anything to do for UCLA, but the next best thing seemed to be to offer something to the Orange County Business Journal on the subject.
The event has received plenty of coverage, but here’s a sideways look that might be useful.
For all of its 108 pages of straightforward economic data, the outlook includes some intriguing anomalies.
Remember when recovery from a recession used to create jobs?
The forecast found that jobs are once again being created in Orange County, but many of them go begging for qualified applicants. A number of California cities have unemployment rates among the highest in the nation. Orange County’s jobless rate is at an historically high rate of 8.6%, according to the latest data available. It’s not expected to improve until 2013—and then only modestly.
How can there be companies in Orange County with job openings they can’t fill?
The catch is that the jobs are for people who can write software programs and understand robots and automated factories. They’re not the assembly work or other manufacturing jobs of past decades. Many of the people who have lost those sorts of jobs in the changing economy are not likely to see them again.
The answer to this dilemma has to be education. Yet, while new, high-skill jobs have been crying out for more education for some time, it’s unemployment that will prove to be the real motivator.
It’s never been easy for high school dropouts, and today’s job market is tougher than ever for them. Staying in school begins to look like the more attractive—or less unpleasant—option for high school students in a rugged and reshaped economy. Word at the UCLA Anderson conference was that more of would-be dropouts are choosing to stay in school.
This change in attitudes isn’t happening the way educators planned.
Orange County can nonetheless look forward to a better-educated work force—thanks instead to a recession.
—Len Diamond, Seal Beach
Another Comment on Crystal Cathedral
Editor:
Regarding your commentary in the issue of Nov. 14 [Editor’s Notebook: Bishop Brown Should Stand Down on Crystal Cathedral Bid]:
Applause!
Even as a non-Catholic Christian, I believe that any major group would be diminished by taking over this “show-biz” edifice.
Let Chapman University have it—they need the real estate.
—John Vrba, Irvine
