Seven years after the peak of “white flight,” Los Angeles is now seeing signs of “Latino flight.” In particular, the number of low-income and poorly educated minorities taking flight is on the rise, while fewer and fewer whites are leaving, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California study of domestic migration patterns. Driving the exodus of Latinos is the fast-rising cost of living in Los Angeles and the disappearance of many low-skilled manufacturing jobs. Combined with an acute labor shortage in many other parts of the nation, the situation is spurring a large number of Latinos, and to a lesser degree Asians, to seek better opportunities elsewhere. “Much of what we’re seeing is driven by jobs,” said Hans Johnson, author of the study. “(Starting) in the late ’90s, more high-tech jobs began to attract highly educated, younger (people) from the Midwest and Northeast, and that accounts for the lower net flow of whites out of California.”
Johnson said the statewide trend is to a large extent driven by demographic changes in L.A. County. “The recession was most severe in Los Angeles,” he said. “And L.A. has been the main driving force for the net domestic outflow out of California.” The study indicates that the number of whites leaving L.A. and the state has slowed significantly since the early ’90s, when hundreds of thousands of white, middle-class residents packed up and fled recession- and riot-torn Los Angeles for the promise of a better life in places like Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Washington. From 1990 to 1995, an average of 180,000 more whites left California each year than arrived from other states, but that net domestic outflow plummeted to an annual average of 45,000 from 1995 to 1999, according to the study. Meanwhile, the number of Latinos leaving L.A. for other U.S. destinations has been accelerating. An average of 33,000 more Latinos left the state than arrived here during each of the first five years of the past decade. That average net outflow jumped to 54,000 a year in the second half of the ’90s. The study only accounts for domestic population movements. If new immigrants from Mexico and Central America are included, the net flow of Latino migrants into California remains positive. However, demographers expect that an increasing number of those new immigrants will make Los Angeles more of a stopover than a final destination in the years ahead.
Economic incentives
Much of the change has come about as Los Angeles in recent years has produced an increasing number of jobs that require high levels of skill. Many of those are in the new-media and entertainment sectors. Meanwhile, the number of low-skill manufacturing jobs being created has continued to dwindle. Positions for garment sewers, assembly workers and other low-end manufacturing jobs are being transferred to less-expensive states and foreign countries. From July 1998 to July 2000, L.A. County lost 6,600 jobs in the non-durable goods manufacturing sector, which amounted to a 2.3 percent decrease, according to the California Employment Development Department. That may not seem like a lot until you consider that over the same period, the local economy added a total of 152,400 jobs. Many of these new jobs have also been on the low-skill end, as the tourism industry, business services, retail and restaurant industries have thrived on the supply of inexpensive, mostly immigrant labor during the ’90s. A study by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, released last month, shows that the number of working poor, who work in these positions, increased by 34 percent during the ’90s. (See related story on page 15.) Although the strong local economy will no doubt continue to create work for gardeners and busboys, which will be filled by new arrivals in L.A., more immigrants are expected to discover that it makes little sense to work two jobs in order to just scrape by in L.A. if there are better-paying jobs in other U.S. cities with lower living costs. “It’s not surprising that immigrants move to where it is less expensive to live,” said Abel Valenzuela, associate director of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at UCLA. “They are rational people, and anecdotal evidence indicates that more are leaving because of the high cost of living here.” Notwithstanding the growth of low-skill jobs in the services sector, it’s evident that manufacturing, which is still the main source of employment for the working poor locally, is on the wane in Los Angeles. And that slowdown combined with the growth of new, high-wage jobs and the resultant escalation in housing prices has put a squeeze on low-pay workers. As the cost of living has jumped, Los Angeles has become an increasingly expensive place for them to survive. As a result, many people who lack the education and skills required by today’s Information Age job market are starting to leave L.A. “Because of the high cost of doing business in Los Angeles, many companies are either moving or outsourcing their low-end jobs to less congested areas where it’s cheaper,” said William Frey, a senior fellow with the Milken Institute in Santa Monica. “So, you’re going to see more low-income people going to these areas, like Nevada and Arizona, where there are jobs and it’s cheaper to live. And once you have a group established there, they can attract others and create a snowball effect.” With unemployment across the United States at record lows, there is plenty of work to be had.
Sky High Rents
An additional factor that makes many low-income Angelenos contemplate a move across the state border is the escalating cost of living in L.A. In particular, housing costs are rising faster than in most other areas of the United States. According to M/PF Research Inc., Los Angeles led the nation in apartment absorption for the period of July 1999 through June 2000. And with little new housing being built in L.A., rents are being pushed upward. Over the 12-month period ended June 30, the average L.A. apartment rent climbed 12.6 percent, according to the M/PF Research. That may not put L.A. in the same league as the Bay Area, where housing costs have gone into orbit and lower-income residents in urban areas are increasingly being displaced by wealthy dot-com types. Still, double-digit annual rent increases in L.A. are most definitely being felt by the poorest residents here, with two and three families often sharing a single small apartment. Also, more and more once-affordable neighborhoods are undergoing dramatic changes as the working poor leave and yuppies move in. “You’re seeing it happen in the neighborhoods around downtown,” said Gregory Rodriguez, a fellow in Los Angeles with the New America Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. “There is increased gentrification of the inner city as young, white professionals who prefer to live centrally move into these neighborhoods. Silver Lake and Echo Park are almost done (with their gentrification), and the poor move out to the periphery.” Other areas might soon follow. Hollywood, for example, is still home to many low-income Latino families, but a number of major retail and residential projects put it high on the list of hip neighborhoods. Anecdotal evidence already shows that rents there are going through the roof, with a one-bedroom apartment in a somewhat-dingy building going for as much as $950 month. But even as Los Angeles is seeing a growing number of low-income minorities leave for jobs in less-expensive parts of the country, demographers don’t expect future new immigrants to stop coming to L.A., even if only as a first stop on their way out. “The long-term pattern is that only two types of people want to live in L.A.,” said Dowell Myers, professor of Urban Planning and Demography at USC. “The college-educated professionals who can afford the high cost of living and the uneducated who come here with low expectations and who perform menial jobs and will put up with very sparse living conditions.”
