Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa traveled to Europe last week to tout Los Angeles as a center for the “clean and green” jobs of tomorrow.
What is it about that guy and green? He can’t stop yammering about that color.
He wrote on his Web site that he told the execs of some clean tech and solar firms in Germany that Los Angeles is a “natural place” to locate any business expansions because we have “a public sector that is committed to making L.A. a global capital of the new green economy.”
Well, that’s fine. But there’s one teensy little problem. Lots of the green jobs he sees migrating to Los Angeles are really blue jobs, as in blue-collar manufacturing jobs. After all, the workers would assemble solar panels and make new-generation batteries and the like. And Los Angeles has a dismal record in attracting and keeping blue-collar jobs.
Just take a look at the data from the state’s Employment Development Department for the last 10 years. From 1998 through 2008, Los Angeles County lost 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs. Almost one out of three, gone.
That’s a steeper decline than the United States and the state as a whole. The rest of California (not including Los Angeles County) lost 18 percent of its manufacturing jobs over that span.
Another way of looking at it: Los Angeles County lost 204,000 manufacturing jobs over that 10-year period. That’s almost as many as the rest of the state lost in that time.
Yeah, L.A. is a global capital, all right. The capital of lost manufacturing jobs.
If you read the Business Journal and operate a business here, you know why manufacturers are slipping away. Labor costs are high here. Electricity in California costs about 33 percent higher than the national average. Water, too, is pricey and its future is a bit iffy. Just about everything a manufacturer needs is expensive. And I don’t need to tell you about land costs and transportation hassles for trucks on L.A.’s streets.
Of course, there are the taxes and the regulations. Not only are they high, but they are always changing – usually for the worst. Gino DiCaro of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association pointed to AB 32, which is the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act. The mayor and the state’s governor touted AB 32 at the global warming fest in Copenhagen last week, but it is chilling the state’s manufacturers, he said. All manner of new costs, from cap and trade on down to more expensive fuel, are embedded in that bill, and manufacturers have yet to discover what nasty new obligations they’ll be stuck with.
Put all these things together, and maybe that explains why the city’s “clean tech corridor” near downtown, which is supposed to house green companies, has yet to get its first tenant. It’ll be interesting to see how many businesses locate there without being bribed with taxpayers’ money or forced to locate there as a condition of a contract with a government agency.
Los Angeles, with all its green efforts, is a great place for companies to sell their green products. But as for making them here? The grass may be greener on the other side of the border.
Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
