Southern California job creation has grown rapidly over the last two years, but the recovery has been dominated by lower-paying service jobs in retail and food services, according to new research.

That trend will continue without major shifts in education and workforce training, according to a series of recent reports by the Southern California Association of Governments.

In Los Angeles County, for example, projections show that more than 70% of total job openings through 2018 will be in occupations that require no college degree. Jobs expected to be in high demand for the county — cashiers, retail salespeople, and restaurant workers — all have median annual wages of $18,000 to $22,000.

“As an economic development plan, this is not a good strategy,” said Christine Cooper, a vice president at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “When we’re thinking about economic development and building prosperity for a region, the focus is not only on creating jobs in food services and in retail operations … it’s focusing on industries where we can sell our products outside the region, and bring new dollars in.”

Continued growth in the low-wage job market in Southern California is reflected in workers’ earnings: The median household income in Los Angeles County has continued to decline since 2010, weakening the purchasing power of families.

Five of six counties in the region, excluding Ventura County, all have a lower per capita income than in 1990.

Experts said the concentration of job growth at the low end of the economy has been the result of steep declines in industries that have historically been pathways to the middle class. The manufacturing industry has undergone a decades-long transformation requiring fewer workers, and the construction industry has only recently begun to pick up.

But economists commissioned all pointed to bleak statistics on educational attainment in Southern California as a key driver of the low-wage cycle.

Only about 29% of Southern California workers older than 25 have a bachelor’s degree, compared with more than 43% of the San Francisco Bay Area’s workforce.

Those stark differences in education are evident in poverty data: Nearly 18% of households in Southern California live below the federal poverty line, compared with 11.3% in the Bay Area.

“If we don’t have a workforce that can fill the needs of employers, they’re going to look elsewhere,” said Wallace Walrod, chief economic advisor at the Orange County Business Council.

Boosting higher education attainment is a long-term struggle, but experts convened by the Southern California Assn. of Governments on Thursday pointed to five industries they believe could boost the incomes of lower-educated workers in the near future: healthcare, manufacturing, construction, logistics and real estate.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wage-stagnation-20141205-story.html?track=rss