Southern California Economic Outlook

“The economy of Southern California is on a growth track in 2004, but the state's poor business environment will limit job growth in the area,” said Chief Economist and Senior Vice President Jack Kyser, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC). Moreover, many of the new jobs created will tend to be in lower wage occupations.”

The LAEDC’s 2004-2005 Economic Forecast and Industry Outlook,” was released today (Monday, Feb. 9, 2004) at a workshop on state budget impacts on tourism, energy, transportation, population and housing. It can be downloaded here.

“The industries with the best growth prospects include: classic aerospace, international trade, and tourism, while the technology sector will be turning around. The health services sector will continue to struggle during the year, but ironically there will still be a decent rate of job creation,” said Kyser.

“In terms of job growth in 2004, Los Angeles County will set the pace with 31,300 nonfarm jobs, followed by the Riverside-San Bernardino area with 25,600, Orange County with 22,200, and San Diego County with14,600,” said Kyser. The LAEDC Forecast pointed out the on-going discrepancy between the nonfarm employment survey and the household survey, which indicated a much stronger growth in 2003 and for 2004. “This reflects a high level of new business formation as well as people working in new ways due to the high costs to business of adding workers. Unfortunately this is probably resulting in a ’leakage’ of tax revenue for government,” he said.

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