With the unemployment rate in San Diego County at 5 percent and layoffs on the rise, job prospects are getting gloomier in the land of eternal sunshine.
But so far, the ratio of gloom versus sunshine depends on where you're sitting.
If you're lucky enough to qualify for a job in the upper-income brackets – especially in management, technology or engineering – things might not seem that gloomy at all. In fact, according to some employment agencies, hiring among the upper echelons in San Diego County is on an upward tick.
“We're as busy as we've ever been,” said Kanani Moser, vice president of business development at the San Diego office of the TriStaff Group employment agency. “We may even need to hire more people here to help fulfill some of the job orders we have.”
Moser specializes in placement of technology workers and executives – with salaries ranging from $95,000 to more than $150,000.
It's mostly the folks on the lower rungs of the ladder – together with thousands of people who spent the past few years building, selling or financing homes – who are feeling the brunt of the employment downturn.
“The (unemployment) trend at the onset of a recession generally starts at the bottom end of the wage spectrum and slowly makes its way upwards,” said Murtaza Baxamusa, research director for San Diego's Center on Policy Initiatives, a think tank that focuses on economic issues. “The people on the lower end are most vulnerable because they're generally relatively new hires and don't have the same kind of contractual relationships with their employers.”
Phil Blair, co-owner of the San Diego offices of Manpower Inc., said the upper-level hiring at a time of stagnation for the lower levels is one more indication that the county's economy is taking on an hourglass shape, with most of the sand at the bottom.
“We are sort of hourglassy,” he said. “We've got a lot of people making $8.50 to $12 an hour at the bottom, with hiring softening by the day. And we've got a much smaller number of jobs up top. But they pay a lot more.”
As a general rule of thumb, the better educated you are and the more you qualify for a high-level job, the less risk you stand of losing your job or of being unemployed for very long.
For proof, let's step back to yesteryear, before home values collapsed and job growth turned negative. By that I mean 2006, which is the most recent date for comprehensive statistics on the local labor force.
In 2006, the jobless rate in San Diego County averaged 4.6 percent. But the unemployment rate for people who never graduated from high school was 6 percent, according to the American Community Household Survey. High school graduates had a 4.6 percent jobless rate; workers with some college education, including a two-year degree, were at 4 percent; and workers with a bachelor's degree or more had a jobless rate of 2.7 percent.
Extrapolating to today, it seems likely that the higher unemployment rate has pushed joblessness for college grads above the 3 percent line. But most economists maintain that any jobless rate of 3 percent or less constitutes full employment, because there are always a few people transitioning from one job to another.
Employment counselors say the demand for highly qualified workers has increased, rather than decreased, during the downturn.
Jody Mohammed, who heads the San Diego office of Adecco International, a temporary employment firm, said she has seen a “little surge” in technical hiring – particularly for information-technology workers. That's despite a broad and deepening weakness in the rest of the market.
“Things are definitely tough – without a doubt,” she said. “This is a softening job market. Over the past two months, our numbers have been reflecting a recession. But for technical workers, we're seeing a 7 percent increase over last year.”
Travis Medley, who is in charge of temporary job placements in the San Diego offices of the Robert Half agency, said he has seen an uptick in demand for financial and accounting professionals (his firm's specialty) in technology, health care and the defense industry.
At TriStaff, Moser said she has seen continued growth in demand for senior-level software engineers as well as corporate directors and managers. She said most of the demand is coming from companies specializing in wireless telecommunications, new media or medical devices.
The Monster Employment Index, an index of online job postings maintained by Monster.com, shows that help-wanted ads in San Diego County jumped nearly 8 percent last month. That's the first time it's risen in a year, except for a one-month blip in August.
The rise in the index was driven mainly by demand for legal workers, scientists, managers, computer engineers, mathematicians and business and financial services. On the other hand, some lower-level categories, such as cooks, security guards and groundskeepers, remained in the doldrums.
The notion that there's still a strong market for tech workers is borne out by data from the state Employment Development Department.
In the past year, most occupations throughout the county have grown in the 1 percent range or less, with well-publicized year-to-year declines among mortgage brokers, real estate agents, construction workers, factory workers and – more recently – retail clerks.
On the other hand, a handful of occupations have grown by more than 5 percent, including wireless telecommunications, which added 1,500 employees; science and research, with 1,200 new workers; architecture and engineering, 1,200; and private-sector teaching and training, 1,100.
That growth in hiring doesn't quite make up for the 10,500 jobs lost last year in the construction and real estate industry or the lesser number of jobs lost in manufacturing and retail. But it's a start. And the employment department expects that strong hiring for high-skilled jobs will continue for at least the next six years.
According to the employment department, five out of the six fastest-growing occupations in San Diego County through 2014 will be relatively high-paying jobs requiring four-year college degrees: network systems analysts, applications software engineers, systems software engineers, network administrators and database administrators.
If those are the jobs of the future, it seems that we should be doing more to prepare our workers for them, with more support for education and training, instead of the cutbacks that are currently being proposed. Otherwise, we might be condemned to continue squeezing into that hourglass corset, with more and more sand drifting toward the bottom.
Dean Calbreath: (619) 293-1891; dean.calbreath@uniontrib.com
