It wasn’t “please pass the cyanide,” but the report was largely sobering. Research brief OC Focus: Forging Our Common Future was unveiled on March 29 at Newport Beach’s Pacific Club by Chapman University researchers Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky.
“We’re not here to depress you,” Kotkin began. “Orange County is growing slower than low-cost competitors like Texas, high-cost competitors like Seattle … in high-paying jobs, population … every area except housing prices.”
So somewhere between sobering and cyanide.
The demographers talked to more than 100 chief executives and 1,200 professionals across the U.S. The study was 10 months in the making, backed by the county and any important company you can name, including Irvine Co., Disneyland Resort and Edwards Lifesciences.
The idea was to identify strengths and weaknesses, “then engage the community to develop a consensus,” Toplansky said.
There are strengths:
• Lifestyle jobs growing at best pace in U.S.
• Strong economic silos of real estate and finance, including fintech and med-tech
• An upside surprise, OC is No. 5 in the country in manufacturing jobs, No. 3 in self-employment
• We love us some OC. No county’s residents rated their hometown higher than us.
• International migration is up, “because Orange County, in America, is to them what our ideal should be,” Kotkin said.
• Our “natural amenities index”—the climate—rates about the best anywhere.
The Lead
The headline, though, is the loss of high-paying jobs and young people, who don’t see OC as a place to launch or maintain careers. In the past decade:
• Net loss of 16,000 high-paying jobs, those over $70,000
• Median home price now eight times median income—Dallas is 3.5— only the Bay Area is higher
• Exodus of Gen Xers, those 35 to 49, from 450,000 in 2010 to 416,000 this year, an outflow correlating to the rise in housing prices.
• Identity crisis: “Across the U.S., Orange County doesn’t pop as a distinct place,” Kotkin said. “They don’t know it well.”
A panel talk among business and civic leaders followed the briefing.
“We’re ready to create a new and better Orange County,” said Doug Holte, president of office properties at Irvine Co. Holte said his company’s role would be to “catalyze and articulate a vision of Orange County as a place to create important things.”
Kristen Simmons said her company is fortunate. Experian Health is among the larger private-sector employers, a known brand she says attracts workers at the start of their careers. But the chief marketing and innovation officer at the Costa Mesa-based health-services company said she knows we should be capturing more of our grads.
“We thrive on balance here,” Simmons said. “It’s a great life. But we have to band together, tap into our common strength … make it known it’s a great place to come at the beginning of your career.”
Actively marketing the county to the rest of the world, citing San Diego as a county “that does it right,” and nurturing key verticals were a few strategies the study’s authors suggested.
But it starts with housing. “We don’t build enough,” Kotkin said, “not dense enough, high enough, not the best use of real estate assets.”
Holte is optimistic. “We’re still in our adolescent phase,” he said of the county. “We’ve moved out of middle school. I think we’re going to find our way, maybe stumble our way, into some great innovative things. We’ve got to get to work.”
