Problems With Statistics

If you were to look at the unemployment statistics for San Diego you would think that we were living in boom times. According to the San Diego Workforce Partnership unemployment for April 2006 was 3.7% (4.5% for the United States which, in the thinking of economics students across the country, means we are at full employment). We are constantly told that San Diego is a haven of job security. Why, if you lose your job for whatever reason you should have no problem at all finding another one. Given the numbers, that may be true, but before you decide to take out that loan against your house's equity perhaps you should look a little closer at those jobs. Our political and civic "leaders" want to tell us that we are a big draw for high paying jobs such as biotech and technology. After having lived here for seven years I am still looking for all of those high-paying high tech companies. True, we do have Qualcomm, and Intuit does have a pretty big presence here, but except for those two and Sony what we have at best are small "mom and pop" shops. While they are doing some interesting work, the salaries I have been quoted by various agencies are not all that promising. I get the same feedback from my friends working in similar technical positions. Salaries for the most part have been stagnant and new offerings at the same level of experience has been a little lower than existing positions. Not good considering the ever increasing cost of living in southern California. And as for biotech, the vast majority of companies here employ less than 100 people. While the benefits are pretty good, again the pay for most positions has stagnated or slightly declined. Now, we are losing jobs in what many have been saying is our strongest area (biotech). In today's San Diego Union Tribune business section there appeared an article titled Diagnostics plant will close; toll is 150 jobs. The parent company of Applied Biotech, a Massachusetts company by the name of Inverness Medical Innovations, is closing its plant here and moving the jobs to China. What I found stunning was the admission in the article that

... while there are no reliable figures on how many U. S. life science jobs have been lost to the practice [offshoring] the toll is beginning to be felt in San Diego.

The article discusses what happened to another San Diego biotechnology company, Discovery Partners International, that let go half of its workforce when it lost a contract with Pfizer to "a rival overseas firm". Discovery is now trying to sell most of its remaining operations with the fate of its remaining employees unclear.

Oh well, given the strength of the San Diego employment market, if I lose my high-tech job I suppose I could always be a bartender (hospitality had the highest increase in jobs created for the category "non-farm and salaried jobs). I couldn't afford my rent, my car payment, or my utilities, but our "leaders" would be happy to know that I was still employed and helping to keep that unemployment figure down.