In 2009, the latest data available, 4 of the top 5 employers in San Diego were either the federal government, state government, or the military. Only the University of San Diego broke the top 5 with the City of San Diego placing 6th. What does this mean to private sector jobs? Plenty.
In the San Diego region people that work for one of the top 15 employers are a federal, state, or city employee, work in the healthcare industry, are part of the university system, or work for the US Postal Service. Anyone not already working in these industries, has to face the reality that the outlook for the remainder of 2010 and most of 2011 promises to be as difficult when it comes to finding a job, let alone a job they like or want.
When the economy returns to some semblance of normal there will only be a small increase in many employment categories because most economic sectors simply cannot recover fast enough to help the San Diego area rebound from the housing bust, huge unemployment, and a shrinking tax base.
With little hope on the horizon for private sector employment people are turning to the city, county, state, and federal governments for jobs. As of 2009 the top 20 employers in the San Diego region employed 230,301 people. Of those employed people 112, 809, almost 50%, were employed by the different branches of the government or the Navy. Another 58,260 were employed by universities or school districts, or about 25%. That leaves just 25% of all other possible jobs in every sector available for people who wish to be employed.
No wonder people are turning to the government for help; there just are not enough well-paying private sector jobs to go around for people who want those jobs, including the more than 10% of the unemployed in the region. Because people are reaching out for any job and the government is creating more government jobs than ever fewer private sector jobs are being created and this public sector growth cannot sustain itself. At some point in time there will simply not be enough private sector companies and employees to sustain a viable economy.
The continued elimination of private sector jobs and the increasing base of public sector jobs will most likely have the deleterious effect on the community in the future because it is private industry and entrepreneurs that bring life and vitality to the community, not big government and certainly not big education. Government and education are certainly needed, but rarely do you see true breakthroughs come from these sectors.
To keep our community growing we need to focus on creating more private sector businesses and jobs and support new enterprises. We need to support the leading edge entrepreneurs and we need to look beyond the government dole to survive.
