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News About Poverty Jobs and the Los Angeles Economy

L.A.'s Getting Richer Los Angeles Daily News - 8/29/07 Hay Pobres Fuera de las Estadísticas La Opinión - 8/29/07 Millions of L.A County Residents Cannot Meet Basic Living Needs City News Service - 8/29/07

A new report based on the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau offers a mixed economic picture of Los Angeles County. Despite small gains in income in 2006, L.A.'s economy is still failing to provide adequate incomes to millions
of residents.

Key Findings

Poverty

• Almost two out of five Los Angeles County residents do not have enough income to meet their basic needs and may qualify for government anti-poverty programs. These 3.7 million residents live below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, which was $40,000 per year for a family of four in 2006. The cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach fair worse than the County, with about 43 percent of residents living below 200 percent of the federal poverty line in 2006.
• The number of families in extreme poverty declined from 13.4 percent in 2005 to 12.4 percent in 2006. More than one-quarter of a million families in Los Angeles County live below the federal poverty line.
• An estimated 15.4 percent of Los Angeles County residents live below the federal poverty threshold , considered in this report to be a measure of extreme need. The County’s federal poverty rate is higher than the rate for California and the nation (both are at 13 percent). More than 20 percent of the County’s children live in extreme poverty.
• Many people are very poor even though they are working. The majority of Los Angeles County families living in extreme poverty (60 percent) include adults who have worked part or full time during the year. Forty-three percent of the adults living in extreme poverty (below the federal poverty line) told surveyors that they had worked either full or part time during the past 12 months.
• Latinos and African Americans are most likely to be extremely poor , with rates two-and-a- half times as great as those of non-Hispanic whites.

Income and Wages

• Median household income in Los Angeles County edged up slightly to $51,315 in 2006 over the previous year. However, the typical Los Angeles County household has only just caught up to where it was in 2000, the peak of the last economic expansion.
• Almost one-third of the County’s 3 million full-time workers earned less than $25,000 per year, well below the amount needed to support a family in 2006, according to the new census data. Low earnings translate into low incomes. An estimated 35 percent of households had incomes below $35,000 per year in 2006.
• Median wages in Los Angeles County have increased an average of one percent a year since 1996. Very modest to negligible wage growth has occurred for both high- and low-wage workers and among different ethnic groups over the past ten years.
• Five of the ten occupations in Los Angeles County with the most projected new jobs provide low wages, including food service workers, sales associates and transportation workers. Future job growth projections suggest that low-wage occupations will continue to play an important role in the economy.
• Two of the industries with the most employment growth in the past ten years pay an average annual wage of less than $30,000. The industry sector with the most growth during this period has been leisure and hospitality, which added almost 70,000 jobs that pay on average $26,676 per year, according to the California Employment Development Department.

Health Care

• There were 2.1 million children or adults uninsured for all or part of the year in Los Angeles County in 2005 . Poor people have seen declining rates of job-based health care, while the number of uninsured has climbed in the past several years.
• The lack of health insurance represents an added burden for Los Angeles County’s poor. Forty-two percent of adults living below 200 percent of the poverty line lack any health insurance, and only 20 percent had health insurance through an employer in 2005.
• Jobs in some of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy are likely to lack health insurance. Almost one-third of construction workers and leisure and hospitality workers lack any kind of health insurance (public or private).