Volunteerism, Migration, Great Resignation
Quote of the Week
"The egalitarian spirit of democracy makes us vulnerable to uniformity. Obsessed with erasing distinctions in rank, we run the risk of elevating mediocrity, failing to produce distinguished statesmen to steward the political order, and thereby endangering our own success."
Mathis Bitton, America’s Next Aristocracy
Big Picture
The American philosopher William James used the phrase “The Moral Equivalent of War” in 1906 to advocate for a future society in which people sacrificed to advance human civilization with the same fervor and self-sacrifice that they willingly expend toward warfare.
Following that call to action a number of auxiliaries were formed with civilian volunteers to fill key gaps during times of duress. For example the national service programs were created in response to the high unemployment rates caused by the Great Depression.
Overtime more formalized national programs were developed and were ultimately brought together to form the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees service, volunteering and grant-making efforts throughout the U.S., including AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, the Volunteer Generation Fund, to name a few.
Every year, these programs enroll more than 270,000 individuals to support nationwide partnership organizations that benefit more than three million Americans. Two significant CA partnerships are City Year Los Angeles and CA Volunteers.
CA Volunteers was established in 1993 to engage Californians in service, volunteering and civic action to tackle our State’s most pressing challenges. In that role it administers the AmeriCorps portfolio in CA with over 80 programs providing critical services to more than 160,000 Californians annually.
In response to COVID, the #CaliforniansForAll service initiative was launched to establish a statewide volunteer corps to help with the state’s response to emergencies and disasters. A core piece of this initiative is the healthcorps.ca.gov, which is a corps of medical doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, behavioral health scientists, pharmacists, EMTs, medical and administrative assistants and certified nursing assistants to address the COVID-19 crisis.
Yet something has been missing from this successful formula. Today in America half of Democrats and Republicans now see members of the opposing party as not just ill-informed but actually frightening, according to the Pew Research Center.
In experiments with thousands of Americans, researchers have found that partisan animosity can now exceed racial hostility: When awarding hypothetical scholarships and cash, we are more likely to discriminate based on politics than race. And as of 2010, a third of Democrats and half of Republicans said that they would be upset if their children married someone from the other party—up from about 5% from each group in 1960.
Why do we hate each other so?
One reason is that Americans are more politically segregated than in the past. We are less likely to have neighbors who belong to another party than we were 20 years ago. And one thing we know about human behavior is that it is easier to hate people you don’t know.
This dynamic is well illustrated when comparing the political beliefs of residents in California's coastal regions with its more rural areas. (One CA town recently declared itself a 'constitutional republic' to protest COVID mandates.)
If the current trend of California's migrating further east continues (see section below) then we may see the development of a more politically diverse area, but that will take time. Another idea to close this gap is the development of a California domestic-exchange program
In the past Americans relied on domestic-exchange programs to bridge these types of divisions. In the 1960s, which was a time of wrenching tensions over war and race, a domestic exchange program was established by historically black colleges and universities to interact with majority white universities in other states. To date more than 500 students and faculty have participated in the exchange over the past 50 years. Yet the majority of all other domestic exchange programs have disappeared.
Bringing back these exchange programs, starting in California, could help remind citizens what we all have in common. The idea is that if people knew each other—really knew each other—they would be more tolerant of one other. It’s harder to demonize someone once you’ve stayed in their homes and shared meals and stories together.
A formal proposal with more specific details is in draft form if you have an interest in learning more about this initiative. Please contact me at michael.kelly@thelacoalition.com
Global City Initiatives of Interest
In Seoul, South Korea, government administrative departments recently announced an investment of $33.1 million into deploying virtual reality Metaverse-based systems across all their public services. by 2026. This next-gen platform will includes a virtual city hall, tourism locations, social service centers and more.
Mayor Oh Se-hoon’s “Seoul Vision 2030” plan takes aims to establish Seoul as a “future emotional city” by soon enabling its citizens to put on their VR headsets to meet with avatar officials for consultations, visit vividly reproduced landmarks, and attend mass-gathering events.
Should LA be next? After all good government equals good politics.
Angelenos Move East to Inland Empire & Beyond
Headline: CA logged its first yearly population loss in 2020, as 129K households left the state.
Trends:
~500K CA households—both individuals and families—moved from one metropolitan area to another throughout the state, and many left coastal regions, where home prices have jumped to new highs.
The Inland Empire effectively tied the Phoenix region in 2020 for the biggest gain in households from migration nationwide.
The stampede of new arrivals has bid up housing prices and pushed out some working- and middle-class families. For every 10 households that moved to the Inland Empire, nearly eight moved out, largely to less expensive locales in Arizona, Texas and Nevada, part of a march east. Some older residents are selling homes to help fund retirement elsewhere.
Chart: 130K households moved out of LA, while 85.5K moved in. The Inland Empire gained more than 33,000 households. The San Francisco and San Jose metros lost a combined 7,900 households to the LA metro. (WSJ)
Big Shift: Throughout the past 30 years, the population of the Inland Empire has grown by 78% to 4.6M, more than twice as fast as the state during that time. The local economy is booming with dozens of warehouses for e-commerce companies like Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which operates a two million square-foot fulfillment center, one of the company’s largest.
The Great Resignation Is Great for Low-Paid Workers
Headlines: The soaring quits rate has little to do with white-collar jobs. It's more about lower-income people getting the chance to move up, opines Justin Fox from Bloomberg.
Data: An estimated 3% of American workers quit their jobs in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. That’s the highest percentage since the BLS started keeping track two decades ago.
Chart:
The biggest increases in quit rates were in sectors such as leisure and hospitality where office workers are few, working remotely seldom an option and wages low.
Within manufacturing, the quits-rate increase has been much bigger in lower-paying nondurable goods (of which food manufacturing is the biggest part) than in higher-paying durable goods.
Industries heavy on knowledge workers aren’t seeing big increases in quit rates and Financial activities remain unchanged.
The quits rate in professional and business services was just 0.4 percentage points higher in September than before the pandemic in February 2020.
Information sector, made up of telecommunications, publishing, broadcasting, motion pictures, software and most internet companies, the quits rate was down 0.3 percentage points.
Trends: Earlier in the pandemic many of these low-paid frontline workers may have quit because of Covid-19 fears, child-care issues or other struggles with work-life balance. But in recent months most appear to have been quitting because they’re finding better jobs somewhere else — sometimes in the same sector, sometimes not.
California averaged 286,154 quits from February 2020 through March 2021, a decline of 3% compared to the pace of the 2012-2019 rebound. Meanwhile, quits in other states rose 5%.
But remember, coronavirus-linked business limitations slashed the number of workers. So California’s quit rate — the share of workers voluntarily departing — soared to 4.7% of all jobs. That’s nearly double what we saw in the Great Recession; it’s the sixth-highest nationally; and it’s above 4.55% in other states.
Stat to note: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that jobs losses were nearly twice as large for those under the age of 30 as they were for older workers.
The good news for younger workers is that it isn’t just prices that are going up; pay is rising, too, especially for less-skilled workers and the very young. But for the typical worker between 25 and 34 years old, price increases have been outpacing wage gains in recent months.
Some Good News Out of the Port of LA
The historic traffic jam at the Port of LA has shown some signs of easing, and that's good news for the supply chain.
The volume of containers dwelling for nine days or more dropped by 37% over the first three weeks of November.
And the elite 0-3 day dwell times are on the rise. The Port of Long Beach reports that as of Nov. 24, those were 8% higher compared to two weeks earlier.
The drawdown happened as ocean carriers were threatened with fines if they let cargo linger and prevent other ships from unloading.
The number of ships waiting to unload at the two ports declined to 57 as of Nov. 24, from 86 on Nov. 16, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California. (During normal times that figure is zero to 1.)
One issue to watch: Labor talks will start in 2022 at Congested West Coast Ports and the Seaport terminals will negotiate a new contract with 22,400 dockworkers in talks that have proven contentious and disruptive in previous years. The negotiations, which involve 70 employers at 29 ports.
One issue to note: Los Angeles' City Council recently adopted an ambitious maritime resolution last week that calls on top importers like Walmart, Dole, Nike, Amazon and Home Depot on 100% zero-emissions ships by 2030, even though the technology doesn't yet exist.
Does LAUSD's Unusual School Board Run Out Its Superintendents?
Issue: Throughout the past 20 years the L.A. Unified School District has had six “permanent” superintendents of the district. in addition to three interim ones.
Context: The seven board members, each representing a different geographic area of the massive district, work full time and earn a salary of $125,000. Each member has a staff of five or more, along with other perks and supports that have resulted in what is in effect a parallel power structure in the district. Cost to the district: at least $10 million a year.
What's unique: This board arrangement in L.A. is unlike any other. No other school board in the country pays its members anything close to that amount, including the nation’s largest, or provides them their own staff to boot.
School Board Compensation by Five Largest School Districts in U.S.
New York City Public Schools (1,081,000 students), Panel for Educational Policy – No compensation (appointed by mayor)
L.A. Unified (575,000 students) $125,000 (annual salary per board member)
Chicago Public Schools (330,000 students), no compensation (appointed by mayor)
Miami-Dade County Public Schools (327,000 students), $47,000 (annual salary)
Clark County School District, Nevada (323,000 students), $750 (monthly stipend)
In CA
Los Angeles Unified (575,000 students), $125,000 (annual salary)
San Diego Unified (118,000 students), $1,500 (monthly stipend)
Fresno Unified (73,000 students), $1,736 (monthly stipend)
Long Beach Unified (69,000 students), $1,500 (monthly stipend)
Elk Grove Unified (63,000 students), $750 (monthly stipend)
Louis Freedberg in a opinion piece from EdSource argues that having such a powerful board makes the district especially vulnerable to the endemic tensions between superintendents and their boards, a major reason for leadership turnover...Continue reading...
Broadband Subscriber Growth Stalls, For Now
An increase in the adoption of 5G alternatives, such as mobile hotspots and fixed wireless plans, may have contributed to the slowed growth of broadband subscriptions.
Yet: While broadband subscriber growth has slowed, each household's broadband use is expected to stay high.
What to watch: The Federal Communications Commission in May launched a program to help low-income households pay for internet service by offering a $50 a month discount to their monthly broadband bills.
The Emergency Broadband Benefit program has enrolled more than 7.6 million households so far. But it's not clear if those households previously had internet service or if the program is paying for new connections.
The data indicates that nearly 68% of program subscribers are using the benefit to pay for mobile broadband, while slightly less than 32% are using it for cable, fiber or other home internet service.
Opportunity: The newly-passed infrastructure bill includes $65 billion to improve high-speed internet access and affordability. $14.2 billion of that funding will be used to provide a $30-a-month voucher to low-income Americans to pay for internet service. That will replace the current $50-a-month program, offering less money monthly but widening the pool of those eligible.