Economic recovery is alive and well on the Central Coast according to the county’s Economic Vitality Corporation.
There are about 7,900 companies in San Luis Obispo County. Economic drivers include tourism, agriculture, education and government, according to the EVC. Two-thirds of the employers are in the private sector, 19 percent are government jobs versus 15 percent statewide and 11 percent of the population is self-employed, which is the highest rate of sole proprietorship in the state.
“In a $12 billion economy, as of last year, we are a very large basket of very, very small companies,” said EVC CEO Michael Manchak. “Over half (56 percent) are one to four employees. These are organizations that require sources to grow and to thrive.”
Economic challenges in the county include lack of head of household jobs, attracting employees from outside the region, a lack of a critical mass of types of businesses, a lower median income than state average, high cost of living, and lower pay for healthcare workers.
“While we have gotten past the panic of the recession and the recovery, now is really the time to look at the infrastructure,” Manchak said at a recent Pismo Beach City Council meeting. “(That is) something we have been doing since we were in the recession, but now coming out of it, I think that there is more emphasis on that, and there should be.”
Manchak said the EVC is predominantly focusing on head of household jobs.
“There are no bad jobs, but the idea being that if we focus on head of household, that would be helpful to everyone,” he said.
The outlook is by no means gloom and doom for the county. There are several areas that are improving. There is a high percentage of job creation in specialized manufacturing, four times the concentration when compared with the rest of the state.
“That is quite an industry that we have here–very high-tech that is really bolstering the economy and diversifying the economy with tourism or with Ag,” Manchak said.
Other employment clusters offering the most amount of job creation overtime throughout the county are building design and construction, green energy, health services, knowledge and innovation and uniquely SLO County.
To help keep the economy looking up, the EVC has introduced local employers’ job fairs in collaboration with Cal Poly and Cuesta.
“The challenge with students at Cal Poly and Cuesta is that many of them leave, many of them don’t know the companies that are here that provide jobs,” Manchak said. “We decided that we would have these job fairs where if you are not a local company, you are not invited. This really helps the students really understand who’s here. With that the companies are able to find talent and students find opportunities.”
The EVC has also initiated 805connect, a Tri-County resource that helps connect businesses to do more B2B or business to business commerce.
“Often businesses don’t know that a service or product exists in the county,” Manchak said. “This will help them do that instead of just purchasing from outside of the county.
Another part of the EVC’s economic strategy is the Broadband Consortium of the Pacific Coast, which is also a Tri-County benefit coming from state-funded grants to determine where broadband is needed and how to get it there.
“This is a county that is very interesting,” Manchak said. “This is a county that has more broadband cables to its coast than anywhere on the entire coast of North America, but we don’t take much advantage of that. This is a grant to help us figure that out.”
The EVC will continue to focus on the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport which represents between $140 and $180 million dollars annually of the county’s economy.
Manchak said the airport’s performance is high compared to other regional airports. It has shown increased passengers with monthly growth rates between 10 and 15 percent for 2014.
Other small airports including Bakersfield, Carlsbad, Santa Barbara and Yuma Arizona have all seen reductions of flights within in the last two months. Locally, SLO has seen an increase in enplanements for 14 consecutive months.
“This airport is the exception,” Manchak said. “That said, over 49 percent of travelling passengers in our county don’t use our airport. The point that the airlines and I would like to make, is that if we don’t use it, we might lose it.”
The EVC is a countywide non-profit, economic development organization focused on starting and expanding businesses through counseling, advocacy, consulting and economic strategy. The board of directors is comprised of business and government leaders from throughout San Luis Obispo County.
