Help me convice my wife moving to Sacramento won't be so bad (San Francisco: employment, theater)

[scootad]

I really like Sacramento. (I moved to the Sac valley a year ago from the east coast and spend many weekends in Sac). If you love the outdoors, sunny weather, and good food its a terrific city. There are many places to go hiking nearby, lakes, good restaurants, a vibrant Midtown area (with monthly art walk), tons of palm trees lining the streets allowing for shade during the hot summer months, and proximity to Lake Tahoe, Napa, and SF are all huge selling points. Easy to escape to the coast (or even take 1 hour flight to LA for a weekend excursion).

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Sacoftomatoes

You seem to be the type that wants to argue for the sake of arguing.

Funny, I was just going to say the same thing about you! I argue when my BS detector goes off. You said some untrue things, I'm just pointing out the facts.

The Bay Area, LA, and San Diego are so dissimilar in size, population, etc that I'm not even sure how you could compare them.

You compare them with numbers and math. Let's compare the numbers 1,000,000 and 100. Using division, we can determine that the first number is 10,000 times larger than the second number. If we can compare numbers so dramatically different in size, the size and population differences between the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento should be a breeze!

The Bay Area is really five metro areas, often combined into the San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area. All together, this includes about 7.5 million people. Sacramento's metro area is about 2.1 million people. I don't want to confuse you too much with decimals, so to keep things simple let's just say that the Bay Area is between 3 and 4 times the size of Sacramento in population. San Francisco's population is about 800,000, a bit less than twice the size of Sacramento. So it's bigger, but not unimaginably so.

The Los Angeles metropolitan area is bigger than the Bay Area: 12.8 million people! That is between six and seven times larger than Sacramento. That's a pretty big difference, but seven is still a number we can comprehend. The city of Los Angeles itself is about four million, about nine times the size of Sacramento! But Los Angeles is the second biggest city in the United States--Sacramento is somewhere around thirty-seventh.

San Diego's metro area is a bit closer to our size, about 3.1 million people--although San Diego itself is bigger than Sacramento or even San Francisco, with 1.3 million people, nearly three times Sacramento's population! The remaining 1.8 million people in San Diego's metro area are a group not much bigger than the Sacramento metro area's 1.6 million.

And that's how we compare things! Hope it wasn't too confusing!

Regarding Waste Connections (from Sacbee):
<snip>
So your justification that Sacramento has a healthy economy consists of: (1) a single company within the defense industry that makes its money from the government (2) increased rail service by Amtrak (another government subsidized venture) (3) declining bankruptcies (4) an old mall that gets very little foot traffic (5) small business jobs for immigrants (6) speculative optimism by realtors?

Actually, I didn't say Sacramento's economy was all that healthy. You said nobody was hiring but the state, and I said the state wasn't hiring either. The local job market is currently pretty flat after a period of free fall, although things seem to be slowly picking up.

It looks like Waste Connection prefers to do business outside of major commercial markets--here's a quote from their website: http://www.wasteconnections.com/company/about-us.aspx
Our corporate strategy targets secondary and suburban markets that have strong demographic growth trends and where competitive barriers to entry can be developed. We seek to avoid highly competitive, large urban markets and target markets where we can provide either non-integrated or integrated solid waste services under exclusive arrangements, or markets where we can be integrated and attain high market share.

Maybe Sacramento was just getting too big for their britches, and the market too competitive for them?

I'm willing to guess that you work for the State or city/local government.

I'm willing to guess that you're unemployed.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by 5thgenSF

we always called it sacatomato in my house too (bay area). my verdict is still out if it's now better or worse!

We got that nickname (along with "The Big Tomato") because of all our canneries--for a while there, the two biggest canneries in the United States were here in Sacramento, along with American Can Company, biggest of its kind in the nation, not a cannery but a factory that just produced empty cans for others to fill! We canned everything from asparagus to zucchini here, but tomatoes are maybe the best known because they're so recognizable, and firms like Bercut-Richards, Libby and Del Monte marketed them heavily. We weren't a farm town, rather we were where the farmers brought their goods to market (and do some shopping and partying while in town) and our transportation network shipped them across the country.

Up until after World War II, when there were only a tenth as many Californians as there are today, state government wasn't a major employer. They were present and important, but about a third of our workforce worked at the canneries, packing houses, breweries, wineries, grain mills, and other agricultural processing industries. Another third of the workforce worked at the Southern Pacific shops (which was the only place in the western US where full-sized steam locomotives were built) or the Western Pacific shops (who located here in part to steal employees from Southern Pacific!) building, repairing and maintaining railroad equipment from silverware to locomotives for these two major railroads. The other third were the service industry--restaurants, bars (lots and lots of bars), theaters, department stores, burlesque houses etcetera, some catering to the workers at the canneries or shops, some to state government and the businessmen who showed up regularly to ask them for stuff.

Over the years, railroads became less important as highways were built, and the same highways let canning operations move closer to the farming areas, so we lost a lot of jobs in both those sectors just as jobs were going crazy in the eastern suburbs, serving our two Air Force bases and an Army depot during the Cold War (along with Aerojet and other military contractors.) California's population went up 1000%, necessitating a new professional class to administer the state. That's kind of what got us where we are today.

[5thgenSF]

Originally Posted by wburg

We got that nickname (along with "The Big Tomato") because of all our canneries--for a while there, the two biggest canneries in the United States were here in Sacramento, along with American Can Company, biggest of its kind in the nation, not a cannery but a factory that just produced empty cans for others to fill! We canned everything from asparagus to zucchini here, but tomatoes are maybe the best known because they're so recognizable, and firms like Bercut-Richards, Libby and Del Monte marketed them heavily. We weren't a farm town, rather we were where the farmers brought their goods to market (and do some shopping and partying while in town) and our transportation network shipped them across the country.

Up until after World War II, when there were only a tenth as many Californians as there are today, state government wasn't a major employer. They were present and important, but about a third of our workforce worked at the canneries, packing houses, breweries, wineries, grain mills, and other agricultural processing industries. Another third of the workforce worked at the Southern Pacific shops (which was the only place in the western US where full-sized steam locomotives were built) or the Western Pacific shops (who located here in part to steal employees from Southern Pacific!) building, repairing and maintaining railroad equipment from silverware to locomotives for these two major railroads. The other third were the service industry--restaurants, bars (lots and lots of bars), theaters, department stores, burlesque houses etcetera, some catering to the workers at the canneries or shops, some to state government and the businessmen who showed up regularly to ask them for stuff.

Over the years, railroads became less important as highways were built, and the same highways let canning operations move closer to the farming areas, so we lost a lot of jobs in both those sectors just as jobs were going crazy in the eastern suburbs, serving our two Air Force bases and an Army depot during the Cold War (along with Aerojet and other military contractors.) California's population went up 1000%, necessitating a new professional class to administer the state. That's kind of what got us where we are today.

interesting. i never knew where the term came from but it was always said in a derogatory fashion.

[caligirlz]

Originally Posted by Sacoftomatoes

Poor job market (unless you work for state)

Actually, it depends on what industry & type of job you are looking for. Healthcare is hiring....hospitals, insurance companies, home health care, etc. My healthcare company is in an expansion mode and hiring. Just saw this in the Bee yesterday: Sacramento medical jobs to boom as health care law takes effect - Business - The Sacramento Bee
Another industry that is hiring is IT, although it's company specific. I was talking to a friend down at the gym. His IT company is hiring.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by 5thgenSF

interesting. i never knew where the term came from but it was always said in a derogatory fashion.

In the Bay Area I think it's a requirement to say anything describing Sacramento in a derogatory fashion. Personally, I like tomatoes.

Besides, Milwaukee already called dibs on "The Big Beer."

[wburg]

Originally Posted by caligirlz

Actually, it depends on what industry & type of job you are looking for. Healthcare is hiring....hospitals, insurance companies, home health care, etc. My healthcare company is in an expansion mode and hiring. Just saw this in the Bee yesterday: Sacramento medical jobs to boom as health care law takes effect - Business - The Sacramento Bee
Another industry that is hiring is IT, although it's company specific. I was talking to a friend down at the gym. His IT company is hiring.

The naysayers will probably pooh-pooh the news about the explosion of healthcare jobs because it's the result of a government program! And our nationally-recognized medical school is both a state school (UC Davis) and a county hospital!

[shelato]

You can see a breakdown of unemployment in Sacramento County by census designated places (census speak for cities and there unincorporated equivalents) below. Who would have thought that Gold River with a 2.2% unemployment rate would have the lowest unemployment rate in the county?

http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfmonth/sacsub.xls

You can also see a break down of what industries are adding or losing employees vs last month and vs last year below. For instance healthcare is up in terms of employment vs this time last year, but down in employment vs this time last month. Some of the hiring in this industry may less about adding net new jobs in the area than just replacing a lot of the churn in the industry. That there is some hiring is positive for the people looking for work, but the fact that the number of people working in the industry is less today than last month may mean that the region itself probably isn't yet pulling out of the bust based upon a growth in health care employment just yet. The more worrying trend is that unemployment rose last month in the region from 10.4 to 10.8%.

http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfmonth/sacr$pds.pdf

[shelato]

Compare the unemployment in the Sacramento region with the unemployment in the Detroit region using bls data below.

Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI Economy at a Glance

Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville, CA Economy at a Glance

[5thgenSF]

Originally Posted by shelato

Compare the unemployment in the Sacramento region with the unemployment in the Detroit region using bls data below.

Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI Economy at a Glance

Sacramento--Arden-Arcade--Roseville, CA Economy at a Glance

they look pretty equal to me. and the same as where i am now!