New SANDAG Analysis Finds Nearly 25% Of County Residents Are Unemployed

Speaker 1: 00:00 It's been obvious from the clothes businesses and people filing for unemployment that the Corona virus locked down has thrown a lot of people out of work. Now we're getting a better idea of just how many people have lost work in San Diego. New numbers from the San Diego association of governments send nearly one in four residents or 24.7% of the population is unemployed. That's about 430,000 people during the great recession. Local jobless numbers never Rose above 11.1% in addition to compiling numbers, SANDAG is also working to track areas in the County with the most unemployed people to see where services may be most in need. Journey. Mia SANDAG, chief economist, Ray major and Ray, welcome to the program. Speaker 2: 00:48 Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 1: 00:50 How did SANDAG put these unemployment numbers together? Because I understand official UpToDate government numbers aren't out yet. Speaker 2: 00:58 That's true. But we do have numbers from the national and state government. And what we do working with one of our vendors is to take that information and to apportionate down to zip code level. And we do that by using a methodology that we've developed to take a look at the underlying implement type that occurs in these zip codes. So we have an understanding of the type of occupations that people have and where they live in the region. And based upon how hard the different industries are hit, we can make an estimate as to how many people are unemployed in each zip code. Speaker 1: 01:34 And did you also rely on the number of people who had applied for unemployment in in various zip codes? Speaker 2: 01:43 That is the base of the data. So we look at the new unemployment claims that come in and as you probably know, the number of unemployment claims that come in lag a little bit from when people are let go. And some of that has to do just with the difficulty that people are having right now logging on and filing their claims. So we see new claims coming in every week. The numbers that we provided include, uh, an a adjustment for self-employed people. We wanted to understand what unemployment was in San Diego and not just what the unemployment rate was based on the, uh, unemployment claims Speaker 1: 02:20 and what were San Diego's last official unemployment numbers back in March. Speaker 2: 02:26 On March 7th, we had an unemployment rate that was 3.4%. Regionally. There were a few areas that had higher unemployment, maybe in the 5% range and some areas that had unemployment as low as one or 2%. Speaker 1: 02:42 And now the estimate is 24.7%. Speaker 2: 02:46 Yes. Now they estimate it's 24.7% regionally. And we see some areas within the region having unemployment rates as high as 34.8%. Even the areas that have fared the best have unemployment rates that are in the 20% range. Speaker 1: 03:03 Have we ever seen a jump like that before? Speaker 2: 03:07 Absolutely not. This is completely unprecedented. Uh, these type of numbers have never been seen in San Diego. Uh, the unemployment rate that we see here is pretty similar to what we had nationally during the great depression. So maybe going back as far as 1934, Speaker 1: 03:25 you say that you use zip codes to track areas within the County that had high numbers of people filing for unemployment and you were able to tell what industries were big employers in those regions. What did that zip code tracking tell you? Speaker 2: 03:43 Well, what it told us is that most of the people who lost their jobs are, and it's really no surprise, um, they're in industries that have close contact and they were really the ones that were impacted by the social distancing guidelines that have been put out. So there are people who are employed in thing in areas like the retail industry, personal care services, uh, transportation, the airline industry, restaurants, the entertainment industry, and the hotel and motel industry. Speaker 1: 04:14 And how does that translate to actual areas of the County? Which areas are hardest hit? Speaker 2: 04:20 So many of the people who work in those industries, uh, those jobs in, in many cases are considered to be more blue collar workers. The areas in the region where they live and are hardest hit include, uh, the zip codes that include Logan Heights, the college area, San Ysidro, city Heights, golden Hill and national city. So it's really that the core of San Diego, if you, if you take a look at a map is kind of from the downtown area going down to the, to the border. Speaker 1: 04:52 And do you anticipate the unemployment rate will keep going up through the next few weeks? Speaker 2: 04:58 You know, it's my belief that for the next couple of weeks until the state home orders are uh, lifted or at least, um, uh, loosened a little bit that we'll continue to see unemployment claims go up. And this is primarily because there, there are people who are probably unemployed right now who haven't filed and haven't shown up in the figures. Speaker 1: 05:18 You said that even in areas that are the least hardest hit, uh, the unemployment rates are hovering around 20%. What are some of those areas? Speaker 2: 05:28 So the areas that have done the best are really those areas where the people have jobs that can be done remotely, where people can work from home. So a lot of office workers and we see those people living in areas like Sorento Valley, Scripps ranch, Del Mar for instance, Carmel Valley, uh, the East Lake area of Chula Vista and Rancho Bernardo. Speaker 1: 05:51 Why did SANDAG decide to jump in and gather this information before the official numbers on unemployment came out? Speaker 2: 05:59 The reason that we did this analysis is that we wanted to understand where in the region people were getting hit the hardest. It's important for us as SANDAG because we are an association of the 18 individual cities that are here in the San Diego region along with the County. And we want to be able to give the elected officials the best information that we can so that they can make objective decisions in terms of how we come up with a recovery plan. Speaker 1: 06:26 Now we're hearing that the state is planning a phased in reopening of business. Does that mean we should see these unemployment numbers go down quickly? Speaker 2: 06:38 Yes, there was nothing wrong with the economy before we started to do the, the a stay at home orders. And so as we start to open up the economy, people will be hired back into the jobs that they had previously. And you'll see the unemployment rate starts to come down. I'm really hoping that we see the, the bottom here in the next week or two and then we see improvement happening into the summer. Speaker 1: 07:03 Does SANDAG have an estimate on how long it may take to get the economy and jobs back on track? Speaker 2: 07:10 We don't have a firm estimate yet because we don't have a good understanding of the timing of the phased in approach that uh, Sacramento is, is talking about when they give us exact dates. When we can start to open up, we'll be able to do some more in depth analysis. But I can tell you is that there are certain industries like the tourism industry, which includes the hotel motel workers. It includes the restaurants, primarily the high higher end ones as low as well as things like SeaWorld and the zoo and entertainment, uh, places in San Diego. They will not recover as quickly as, as the rest of the economy. Um, we see that, uh, probably a lot of summer vacations have been canceled. Uh, people won't be coming to San Diego for, for tourist reasons in the next couple of months. And then business travel is probably going to be canceled, uh, in the fall. And so tourism may take a year to 18 months, maybe two years to recover. Speaker 1: 08:11 Okay. I've been speaking with SANDAG, chief economist Ray major Ray. Thank you very much. Speaker 2: 08:18 Thank you very much.