San Antonio Statistics for the curious and for the "haters" (Houston: job market, neighborhood)

[Quattro72]

Originally Posted by LookingatSA

I'll go back and correct it. I meant call center jobs are white caller.

For the record, call-center jobs are NOT white collar (or caller as stated by the OP). Maybe in SA they are. That’s what they are – jobs, not careers. LOL.

[amexicano]

@Quattro: Can you please repeat your definition of "white collar"? I always thought that the difference was based on office based vs. factory based (people in offices used to wear suits and white collar shirts while people in factories used to dress work uniforms, which I guess had blue collars) and not on whether they mad lots of money or not. I'm not defending anyone here, just want to understand what's your definition.

[Bo]

I suspect the comparison that is vexing some of you is that you are equating salaried workers with "white-collar" and hourly workers with "blue collar." Others seem to be focusing on job functions, defining blue-collar as any work that doesn't happen in an office. As I posted before, I suspect that the statistics in the OP are based on job function.

If you mean to compare salaried vs. hourly positions, say that. It'll eliminate the tug-of-war this thread is having over call-center positions, which are hourly and in an office.

[DexterCat]

Originally Posted by LookingatSA

I hope this puts an end to a lot of the wayward stereotypes and misconceptions posted on this board by some.

Via the website Livabilty.com

Median Resident Age: 33
Married: 49.88%
Single: 50.12%
Median Household Income: $54,818 ($39,000 in 2000)
Median Rent for a Two Bedroom Apartment: $803
Median Travel Time to Work: 21 minutes
Total Workforce: 733,921
White Collar jobs: 76%
Blue Collar jobs: 24%
Bachelor's Degree: 15%
Masters Degree: 10%

minimum wage call center job = / = white collar. SA is still full of fat people and uneducated workers.

deal with it.

[SanAntonianByChoice]

Perhaps they should look into opening a City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Texas > San Antonio > I Hate San Antonio (?)
What should be a forum for exchanging serious thought, opinions, experiences, and questions, quite often descends into anonymous commenters ready/ willing to launch insulting comments that sometimes snowball into heated arguments. Different perspectives don’t necessarily mean one’s point is invalid. But it sure would be nice to keep the conversation civil. For now, I’ll just utilize my handy ignore feature on those folks who show a pattern of unproductive commentary reflecting hate/anger. Life is too short people and lunch awaits! J. <jumping off my lil soap box>
Make it a good Thursday y’all!!

[Newk]

Great read but too much off-topic.

[Bo]

Originally Posted by SanAntonianByChoice

What should be a forum for exchanging serious thought, opinions, experiences, and questions, quite often descends into anonymous commenters ready/ willing to launch insulting comments that sometimes snowball into heated arguments. Different perspectives don’t necessarily mean one’s point is invalid. But it sure would be nice to keep the conversation civil.

AFAIK, there has not been a single report of a post in this thread.

If it's insulting, report it. Insults are against the TOS. Beretta and I agree that the conversation in every thread in this forum needs to be civil. Best way to accomplish that is to discuss the topic and not each other.

[The Black Irish]

Agreed. It got a lil heated yesterday. Sincere apologies. Guess my Irish temper got the best of me. It happens.

[SweethomeSanAntonio]

Originally Posted by DexterCat

minimum wage call center job = / = white collar. SA is still full of fat people and uneducated workers.

deal with it.

I was working at a call center and entry level pay plus bonus exceded 45k! I have a friend in Austin that works at Apple and he makes better than decent wages. Call center jobs are not all telemarketing settings. All F500 companies have some sort of call center to handle many different business functions, so minimum wage is not apart of the equation.

your uneducated worker call center job myth has been debunked!!

And for the record....San Antonio and Austin have about the same obesity rate. So much for uneducated fat minimum wage workers.

[Darien_Rod]

Earlier this year, I was involved in a acquisition for a company looking to expand significantly in Texas - in fact, it was the key reason for this particular aquisition. Months of due dillegence followed, and in the end, they were quite content with our advice of NOT expanding into the San Antonio market for the next few years, and instead focusing on the other "big 3" cities. A search of City-data forums this morning pinged a lot of the same statistics we referenced.

A quick point - any time a proper valuation or assessment is done of a "city", it is almost always done of the multi-county metropolitan area. San Antonio is a bit of an anomaly as more than 60% of its population lives in the city proper - compared to 18% for Dallas and 46% for Austin. Most cities have suburbs, San Antonio has neighborhoods. It is a simple concept that is often missed in the whole "America's 7th largest city" argument - when invested money is actually involved, you are considered the 25th largest city in America.

I pulled some of the rougher, non-proprietary stats we used from simple census bureau surveys from 2009 and 2010 (You can access them all via the following links: http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regi..._metro0211.xls and Texas QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau[/url]). A rudimentary number crunch leads to the following statistics:


San Antonio - New Braunfels MSA Population2,142,468
High School Graduates (age 25+)81.1%
Bachelors Degree of Higher (25+)24.5%
Homeownership Rate66.0%
Median value, owner occupied home$115,707
Per capita income$23,146
Median Household Income$47,461
Poverty Rate16.6%
Retail Sales Per Capita$13,596,
Metro GDP $77,712,000,000

Greater Houston - Population5,946,800
High School Graduates (age 25+)79.3%
Bachelors Degree of Higher (25+)28.2%
Homeownership Rate63.2%
Median value, owner occupied home$134,538
Per capita income$27,077
Median Household Income$55,531
Poverty Rate15.1%
Retail Sales Per Capita$12,477,
Metro GDP $363,201,000,000

DFW Metroplex - Population6,366,542
High School Graduates (age 25+)82.0%
Bachelors Degree of Higher (25+)30.2%
Homeownership Rate63.2%
Median value, owner occupied home$142,187
Per capita income$27,893
Median Household Income$56,096
Poverty Rate14.2%
Retail Sales Per Capita$13,928,
Metro GDP $356,615,000,000

Austin - Round Rock MSA Population1,713,289
High School Graduates (age 25+)86.5%
Bachelors Degree of Higher (25+)38.6%
Homeownership Rate60.8%
Median value, owner occupied home$178,353
Per capita income$29,521
Median Household Income$56,971
Poverty Rate13.7%
Retail Sales Per Capita$16,943
Metro GDP $78,426,000,000


If you can manage through the somewhat difficult formatting, a simple picture emerges - San Antonio has less wealth, by almost any metric, than the other 3 large Texas metro areas. It simply cannot be compared in an economic sense to Dallas or Houston, who dwarf San Antonio in virtually every siginificant cateogry of economic importance and have over three times the population to amplify these differences. The closest "peer" would be Austin, and again, the income, education, growth and GDP per capita disparities are significant enough to often deter investment your way. These are all quantitative observations - San Antonio also scores poorly on many surveys of infastructure, consumer adaptiveness, quality of higher education, geographic location, ease of business operations and regulatory environment.

I would not dispute that San Antonio is a major city, is growing in a very positive way, and is part of the general trend of strong growth in Texas. I'm afraid from many business angles, however, that it remains both empircally and subjectively a relatively poor city and not in the league of Houston, Dallas, and increasingly Austin. The disparity is not dramatic, and it may be closing somewhat, but it was enough to deter at least three large businesses I know of from expanding into San Antonio. While you may have an up and coming city, you also have the disadvantage of being near three of the "hottest" economic areas in the country, and they win almost every time on points.