Jobs in Mendocino County

All data sources are listed in the section Data Sources and Downloads.

County Jobs Way Up, Private Sector Jobs Down

The County made several key decisions from 1997 through 2002 that led to a rapid increase in staff expenses including pension fund expenses. These County actions can't be analyzed in a vacuum to understand why they forced our County to rapidly expand its debt. They must be seen in the context of the long term decline of our county's economic base. This page presents some of the details of how these two trends interacted to create this very high County debt.

The first 4 years of this period were good economic times generally in the nation. The stock market boomed, the Dot Com craze accelerated, jobs, profits and incomes were growing. These trends were felt in Mendocino County as well. During these good times the County Board of Supervisors and Administration made their fateful decisions to rapidly increase the County's Staff, their payscale and benefits.

But then began the bad news. We suffered a Dot Com bust in the Bay Area, a California energy crisis, a very severe stock market decline, national recession, 9/11, Wars on Terrorism and in Afghanistan and Iraq, a terrible state budget crisis, and the recall of the Governor.

According to the State Employment Development Department, Mendocino County lost 652 private sector jobs from 2000 through 2004. And the way we lost those jobs was worse. We lost over 1600 "goods producing" jobs and gained nearly 1500 service jobs. In general goods producing jobs pay much better than the type of service jobs we gained. EDD indicates we lost nearly 500 farm jobs as well.

But while we were losing 952 private sector jobs, government added 1237 jobs, 1182 of which were local governments. (Although the state reports Jobs in casinos in local government jobs, they are more like private sector jobs. EDD data suggests that about 300 casino jobs may have been added from 2000 to 2004 and in the previous 4 years as well. - the data isn't as clear about this. This analysis moved 300 new tribal tribal casino jobs from the government category to private sector for each of these periods. If we hadn't made that adjustment, there would have been 300 fewer jobs in the private sector and 300 more in local government than what is in the table.)

The working people of this County now face a job market that has lost most of our high–paying goods–producing jobs and seen them replaced with lower paying service jobs. And, we as a County have lost a large number of tax-generating jobs and added even more tax-consuming jobs.

Private sector employees generate the income that pays County taxes. The County needs those taxes so that it can pay its workforce. The trend of losing private sector jobs and shifting private sector workers income down while increasing government jobs and payscale can not continue. In the past year or two private sector jobs are starting to come back somewhat while local governments are starting to reduce the size of their staffs. However, we've lost too much ground.

How Many Private Sector Jobs Do We Have
For Every Government Job? (All Local, State and Fed)

This graph shows the ratio between ALL government jobs (all local, state and federal) to the private sector. We had nearly 5 private sector workers for each job in governments in 1997 and 1998. But by 2003 and 2004 that number was down to 3.2 and has only slightly moved up to 3.4. There are now more than 1/3 fewer private sector jobs for each government job.

Think about it – how do 3.4 people completely support one other person?

How Many Private Sector Jobs Do We Have
For Every County Job?

The graph to the right shows how many private sector jobs exist for every County job. From a high over the past decade of 25, the combination of losses of private sector jobs with the rapid expansion of County staff led to a 30% decline down to 17.4. For every County job, there are 3 to 4 other local government jobs in the county.

How Much County Salary and Benefits
For Each Private Sector Job?

In the years before Slavin each private sector jobs "share" of the County Salaries and Benefits was less than $1700 each. Now, after Slavin, this number has doubled to between $3300 and $3400 for each employee in the private sector.

As complicated as government finance is, we still assert a direct economic relationship between the County government and the citizens who are supposed to be served by that County government. At some basic level, the working citizens of this County are paying the County's staff. In the 5 years since the County Board of Supervisors adopted the Slavin Study each worker in the private sector experienced a 57% increase in his or her share of the cost of the County's staff.

Pay Scales

It is considerably more difficult to get average or median compensation numbers for workers in the private sector. Two problems are, first, the value of benefits that are not subject to payroll taxes are not reported in most data series for private sector income, and second the difference between full time and part time employees is not tracked, or income is reported "per capita" which includes kids born yesterday and folks who will die tomorrow.

It's clear from the data, however, that on average County employees receive considerably higher compensation in the form of both salaries and benefits (esp. pension benefits) than do private sector employees.

The State Employment Development Department reports that during 2003 private sector employees in Mendocino County earned an average of $2185 a month, or $26,222 a year. This compares with an average budgeted for County employees of $39,398 that year. In addition County employees were budgeted to receive an average of $18,914 in benefits, or 48 cents of benefits for every dollar of salaries or wages. In fact, when the year was over, the County's financial reports showed that they received 55 cents of benefits for each dollar of salary.

Average compensation for County staff, salary and benefits, was around $58,300 in 2003. Our best guess is that it was between $28000 to $34,000 for full time employees in the private sector. Therefore, our best estimate at this time is that on average County staff makes somewhere in the range of 70% to 110% more in salary and benefits than private sector employees recieve.

According to this year's Proposed Budget, the average County salary will be $43,085 with average benefits of $26,954. That means the average total compensation the County plans for its workforce is over $70,000 a year. The County's Budget shows that for every dollar the County plans to pay its staff it intends to provide 63 cents of benefits.

Click to go to next page, Our County is Like An Iceberg.