San Diego Jobs

[mycroft]

I keep hearing that the San Diego job market is strong with very little unemployment. However, over the last few months, the want ad section in the Sunday Union-Tribune sure seems to be pretty skinny. Today, it was one 14-page section, with probably 12 pages or less of jobs. It seems to me anytime in the past that the job market has been roaring, there’s been at least 3 thick sections of the paper. It’s been periods of high unemployment that there are few want ads (makes sense, eh?).

I know some of it has to do with more internet job postings, but I can’t believe that landscapers, hotel housekeepers, and most admin assistants go to monster.com for their job hunting needs. Fingers crossed here, I’m not needing to look for a job, but I was wondering if this low unemployment is real, or is it some kind of spin?

[powayseller]

I’ve noticed Help Wanted signs in many shops since about February. I started thinking it was a result of the population exodus, and I am sure that is the reason.

We’ve got 44,000 people a year leaving SD as of the year ending June 30, 2005, and I bet it’s 55,000 this year, as the rate of stuff like this changes pretty quickly. This leaves less need for workers, but also openings. At Henry’s, they finally (after 6 weeks of Want Signs) found a cashier, and I was in line forever, waiting for her to look up all the produce codes.

Start looking for signs of the population exodus. It’s the silent epidemic. No one really talks about it, but it’s going on in a big way.

Do you remember when we had 50K people/year coming here, because the economy was booming? It is not booming anymore. Our wages are too low for the cost of living.

I went to the Fair over the weekend, and boy oh boy, is that a motley crew. A real slice of life. I never see so many down and out looking people in my regular life, as at that Fair. Looking at all those colorful folks, I am reminded that most of San Diego is made of people who are not college educated, and who cannot afford even half the median priced house. How do all those people even afford to live here?

[JES]

Hmm…I just read somewhere, and heard on the news, that San Diego has more online job postings in recent months than any other city in the US!

Here’s the link:

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/15263/

[JES]

Go to Qualcomm’s website and do a search for jobs in San Diego. Over 500 openings! But…the cost of living is so high that people wont move here, even for those high paying jobs.

[powayseller]

In December 2005, the U-T ran a story about the poor job situation in San Diego. Only a few companies have openings, and one is Qualcomm, with 500 openings they cannot fill because they can’t get people to move here. So this situation with Qualcomm has been going on for a while. My friend’s husband is a VP of one of their divisions, and he has no openings at all, and was surprised at the 500 figure when I asked him about it last month.

What is high paying? Do you mean an engineer earning $90K? That is not high enough for San Diego. How much do their engineers earn?

[mycroft]

Thanks for the suggestion about Qualcomm. I just took a look at their web site and found 658 openings. On a quick perusal of the list, they all looked to be technical and managerial openings, which presumably would be all higher paying then clerical. I didn’t see any clerical positions at all. Does Qualcomm not post those openings, are are there just not any? If powayseller’s friend was surprised at the number of openings, is this just a way to garner resumes in case jobs become open?

Now that you mention it, powayseller, I’ve noticed more than the usual number of help wanted signs in retail businesses also. I wonder if business owners are doing that in lieu of advertising. A help wanted sign costs a couple of bucks and can be reused. An ad in the Union-Trib can be a couple hundred bucks, I think. At any rate, retail jobs aren’t the ones that will allow the worked to buy so much as a small studio apartment converted to a….ahem….cough, cough…condo.

[anxvariety]

I’m a software developer for a San Diego consulting company.. we have an incredible client base.. why incredible? Because the majority of htem are what I consider to be recssion proof – lots of gaming industry(Las Vegas) companies and also some bail bonds type companies. Crime and gambling baby!

Supposedly, First American title company is one of the highest paying places for software developers to go in San Diego and I’m always hearing about jobs they have.. I am happy with my job so I don’t pursue, but it sounds like they’re still hiring strong.

Less than a quarter mile from where I live are the new Genentech buildings in Oceanside.. these are some serious buildings, like huge sports arena looking buildings spanning many acres.. the building hasn’t even completed yet.. so I’m wondering what that situation is going to become from a jobs and economic slowdown standpoint.. I guess the shareholders will keep the thing afloat…

[JES]

I work in the wireless industry and have seen a strange combination of job losses but also job gains the past two years. Compaines like Intel and Kyocera have laid off hundreds, yet others like Northrop Grummon, LG, Qualcomm, Motorola are hiring like crazy. Overall, my feeling prior to reading these posts has been that the area economy and job market is booming, unemployment is low and companies simply cannot find enough talent to fill the available jobs. Even retail ‘appears’ to be strong as more and more businesses open up everywhere I look in North County, compared to the number that have closed.

I’d say 80-120k is acurate for those engineering jobs. I have seen some couples come out this way, both engineers, and they can easily make ends meet until they have children. Overall, home prices are a joke and even if things are indeed booming here now I don’t believe it will last. Companies are choosing to set up shop in other cities, people wont move here and are leaving in droves, and the fat cats using their home equity to sustain consumer spending are in for some surprises as their loans reset these next couple years!

[mixxalot]

Yeah, I work in technology field and the jobs pay low for cost of living. I see plenty of tech jobs but due to sky high gas prices and rent/real estate may explain why people can earn same salary in Texas or Florida and make their dollars go a lot farther. I wonder why employers are so cheap in San Diego?

Dont they realize it costs a small fortune to make ends meet in this city?

As for Qualcomm, they suck. I had an interview and they are the lowest paying company in San Diego. They hire a lot of folks from India on H-1B visas and pay them 50-60k for an engineering job that most employers would gladly pay an engineer 100k in most places. Thats why Qualcomm cannot find people to move here to San Diego. 50k does not go far enough in America’s so called finest city. Heck even San Francisco pays better than San Diego for same cost of living.

[powayseller]

I thought Qualcomm was a high paying employer, but perhaps their low salaries explain their high openings. I bet they compensate with good benefits and stock options. My friend’s husband did well on his stock options, and they cashed them in at the right time. She told me that at Qualcomm, you are expected to work until the job is done,but they are family friendly because they give family parties. That is NOT family friendly. So you work hard, you play hard. The guy I know heads a small division and is fully staffed and was completely surprised when I mentioned the 500 openings. He didn’t know there was even one opening.

Employers pay what they can. They pay less here, because they can. It’s the Sunshine Factor.

Remember that employers pay what the industry will bear, not what the local housing market demands.

[barnaby33]

Employers pay what they have to, not what they can. Qualcomm never payed good salaries, it was always about the stock. Like most big companies they always have job openings, but are they actually hiring for them is the question. Often a company will leave a req open even if they have a hiring freeze, because it would look bad.

Overall San Diego pays middle of the road to higher end wages, but the cost of living is so much higher here. The argument that companies can’t find qualified workers is bunk, except in certain specialized fields. Bio-tech and certain hardware specialties I could believe.

IT has a boom/bust cycle that is often not in tune with the general economy. It so happened last time that the two were in tune because IT was the bust. The time before that Defense went bust and San Diego was a huge defense town. This time I don’t think the general recession will affect IT as much. I think that where we are at right now is the tail end of a small boom in our industry, heading into a cooling off or small recession. The economy at large however is heading for something much larger.

Lots of companies, mine included, hired like mad up till recently. That seems to be cooling some. I would imagine Qualcomm is no different.

Josh

[PD]

We have also not discussed what will happen when we get a new president. What if there are significant military cuts? This would prolong and significantly worsen the economic and housing situation in SD. Lets say the bottom would normally be 2009 or 2010. What if a big cut in military spending hits in 2011? Just the talk of that happening would have a dampening effect in 2009 and 2010. We may reach a plateau at the bottom and then drop off a new cliff.

Further, what if one or more than one of our bases ends up on BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure)?

[mrquoi]

I’ve found that biotech jobs that pay 80K in the Bay Area only pay 70K in San Diego. And unless you’re with a good company whose going to survive and have the stock be worth it — well you’ll be looking for another job in a few years.

It is very exciting that Genentech is moving to O’side, though.

I used to work at UCSD, which I believe is SD’s largest employer. Employees that have been there a long time are doing OK, since they were grandfathered in at a time of sweet retirement benefits and probably got cost of living increases. Or at least until every one was forced to take pay cuts in the 90s. But people who started in the last decade or so are not only taking a 25-30% hit for the pleasure of working in academia, they’re getting paid at least 10-15% less than other UCs. Plus parking is $70 a month, you now have to pay for your health insurance, you start with only 3 weeks vacation, etc, etc. I have a friend there now who’s gotten a total of 4% increase in salary over the past five years.

In a presentation on posted on the HR website, the average UCSD staff salary is $46K.

[powayseller]

My friend’s company has contracts with the military for BRAC work. I read that housing prices are going up in NC (?) as bases there are increasing in size.

[JES]

My comment about employers having a hard time finding qualified workers was meant to apply to certain high tech jobs like, for example, wireless applications engineers, software programmers etc. Go to any high tech company in the area and check out there job site on the web and you will see certain openings repeated over and over. EG: Viasat always has multiple listings for software engineers. I have seen it myself with my company – we have a heck of a time finding people with 1) engineering backgrounds, 2) combined with solid sales experience, 3) Who have worked with customers similar to ours in the past. When we find them we pay them in the low 100s right off the bat.

You’re right about QCom…word has always been that they pay low but rely on the lure of stock options to get good employees. With the cost of living here and the market crash in the not so distant past, these options look less and less lucrative…

[Author]

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