Livable Communities Newsletter

Volume 19 / Number 71 / August 2024

Your Livable Communities Newsletter

In each of our quarterly Livable Community Newsletters written since the publishing of the 2023 State of the Region Report, we have spent major effort to dive into specific topics offered. For this quarter we decided to look into the State of the Region through the lens of the livable community’s 3 Es, and stress the coordination of key topics that must integrate to truly understand the functioning of our complex county. We believe that each topic must be explored in a “give and take” approach that is required to produce long term results.

Let us know what you think about this.

Thanks,

Stacy Roscoe

State of the Region

Data & graphs in these articles come from the most recent edition of the Ventura County Civic Alliance’s State of the Region report published in the fall of 2023.

The Civic Alliance’s focus is on the three Es: Economy, the Environment and Equity.

LOOKNIG at the 2023 STATE OF THE REGION REPORT

in relation to the 3 Es

ECONOMY

While Ventura County’s economy has not been growing at a substantial rate, there are some positive notes. Our job market has rarely been better, with an unemployment rate that averaged only 3.7% in 2022. In May 2022 it bottomed out at 3%, tied for the county’s lowest month on record. Considering that our unemployment rate hit a high of 14.8% at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (far higher than even in the worst of the Great Recession 2009-2010 with its eight year slog to recover), our bounce-back has been remarkably fast. The peak of unemployment in April 2020 dropped rapidly so that the year averaged 8.7%, and by the fall of 2021 it had fallen below 5%. Through most of 2022 it remained below 4%, a rarity for the past 30 years.

After a 7% decline in jobs in 2019, job creation in the two years following the COVID-19 recession saw a recovery and then a rise in jobs with a 4.2% growth in 2022, the best single year of the 21st century.

Ventura County has never quite recovered from the drop from the pre-Great Recession peak in 2007 at $66.5 billion gross product, and for almost a decade our economy remained stagnant. While our adjusted for inflation growth is still 12.3% smaller than our pre-Great Recession peak, the last few years have seen an increase in growth bringing us to $58.3 billion in 2021.

ENVIRONMENT

In 2022 we did better on a per capita basis in curtailing our water use, presumably because we had more rainfall and less potable water went into landscaping. Cities in cooler costal areas had the lowest water use (roughly a third of the largest per capita consumption city in East County) and levels remained stable with reductions ranging from 2 ½% to 9%. Inland cities with hotter temperatures and larger lot sizes had the highest water usage per capita with their reductions ranged from 8% to 30%.

The question of whether a growing economy comes at the expense of the environment is a valid one. Some of the data seen in the report may give pause for thought. Despite a significant increase in tonnage coming through Port Hueneme that saw levels rise from 145,268 metric tons of high, heavy and general cargo in 2020 to 635,017 metric tons in 2023, our air quality has not worsened.

One possible off-setting factor might be that traffic on our major highways has decreased significantly between 2018 and 2022 helping to improve our air quality: Highway 101 by 25.4%; Highway 118 by 17.5% and Highway 23 by 34.8%.

Historically speaking, 2022 was a fairly clean year for air quality. There were only 11 days that year that exceeded the state’s 8 hour standard and none that exceeded their 1 hour standard for ozone levels.

On only 3 days in 2022 did Ventura County exceed the state’s 24 hour standard for PM10 (particulate matter). This is the lowest total in the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District’s database, dating to 1990.

While we have reduced the production of oil and gas in the county over the last decade, the number of jobs in mining and oil extraction from 2017 through 2022 has grown 10 % and salaries (the highest of the goods-producing groups) have risen as well.

EQUITY

A big component in equity concerns wages and cost of living. Currently, though narrowing, the gender wage gap in Ventura County persists. In 2021 women here on average earned 85.7 cents for every dollar earned by men. In inflation adjusted dollars, in 2021 the average median earning in Ventura County was $54,162 compared to $63,203 for men.

Ventura County is an expensive place to live. The money required to cover housing, food, childcare, transportation, health care and other expenses for a moderately sized family far exceeds the income of a family with only one wage earner. A living wage of $46.99/hour is needed to support a family with two adults (one working) and 2 children. The average wage in farming, fishing & forestry is $16.58/hour, the lowest in the county. Average hourly wages in food prep and serving, healthcare support, building & grounds cleaning & maintenance, transportation & material moving, personal care & service, production, and sales come to less than half of what is needed for such a family. Only five sectors’ average hourly wage meet the criteria: architecture & engineering, healthcare practioners & technical workers, computer & mathematical, legal, and management. Only the two latter ones can provide enough for a single parent with 2 children.