 * Critical Findings * Deforestation in the Mid-1800s Resource Use: Changing Needs Through Time REGIONAL ECONOMIES * SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS Community Well-Being in the Sierra Management Scenarios and Strategies
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Jobs and Wages
Employment patterns provide the simplest and clearest illustration of the linkages
between the Sierra Nevada ecosystem and the local economies of the households, communities,
and counties in the Sierra Nevada. Table 2.3 summarizes employment patterns for the different regions. Across all regions, most employment is in providing local services
in sectors such as health, education, retail, wholesale, finance, real estate, and
public utilities. Most of these jobs exist because other residents are bringing new
income into the economy by selling goods or services outside the region, receiving
income from interest and dividends, or receiving government transfer payments. The
amount of income generated by retirees is primarily determined by the demographic
makeup of the different regions. Income earned by selling goods or services outside the region
is closely related to jobs associated with natural ecosystem products. The six nonlocal
service sectors show the relative importance of the different sectors. Most construction and non-timber manufacturing employment is related to development of a relatively
small area on the western fringe of the Sierra Nevada. The travel-related employment
covers only 70% of total recreation and tourism employment because restaurant employment is combined with other local service employment when census-based categories
are used. Employment in agriculture and mining on private land or long-term public
leases is significant throughout the Sierra Nevada and is slightly larger than timber-related employment overall. Finally, the significant level in federal and state employment
is dominated by jobs in resource agencies as well as the expanding number and capacity
of prisons in the region.  TABLE 2.3 (ACTUAL VIEW 30K) Major employment sectors (all numbers are percentages). (From volume III, chapter 23.) With the exception of the travel-dependent economies in the Greater Lake Tahoe Basin and the southeast region, most of the regional economies have considerable diversity in employment. Patterns of timber dependency are not visible in any region even though they are noticeable in the ten remaining mill towns and in other communities where sawmills have shut down over the past twenty years. The population of the heavily forested areas of Plumas, Sierra, and Lassen Counties is diluted in our statistics by the much larger foothill population in the northern region. Labor mobility via commuting (the average travel time to work for every region is around 25 minutes) and permanent relocation make it difficult to define community-level economic patterns that will be stable for more than a few years. Although basic wages contribute less than a third of the total personal income entering local economies, the sources of these wages strongly influence the character of local economies because they are more variable than income from capital assets (interest, dividends, and rent) or government transfer payments such as social security. When corrections are made for wage differentials in different sectors and wages are aggregated into similar groupings, the regional variation becomes apparent (table 2.4). Basic wages were grouped into four different categories depending on the relative dependence of wages on different uses of the ecosystem. Two categories are directly related to the ecosystem: jobs and wages related to commodity production (timber, agriculture, and mining) and those related to services (recreation and tourism). The other two categories (residents and regional) have little dependence on the ecosystem. The resident category includes wages earned by resident workers in construction and high-wage services such as financial and health services. The regional category includes wages from basic jobs that exist in any regional economy, such as manufacturing not related to local raw materials and government employment not related to resources. These latter two categories provide wage stimulus that comes from residents who choose to live in the Sierra but could live elsewhere. They enjoy the social and environmental amenities of the Sierra, hence have an indirect link to the ecosystem. But they receive most of their personal income from sources other than local jobs. The basic proportion of these jobs was estimated with the standard location quotient methodology commonly used in regional economics. Employment in government and construction is divided among the different sectors according to local economic activities. Only in the Greater Lake Tahoe Basin does a single sector (services, 59%) provide more than half of all wage stimulus. Some of the commodity sector basic wage stimulus for the San Joaquin region may be associated with agriculture in the Central Valley rather than the Sierra Nevada. Sierra-wide, the wage stimulus from jobs not dependent on the ecosystem accounted for 58% of the total.  TABLE 2.4 (ACTUAL VIEW 68K) Percentage of basic wage stimulus of nonlocal employment sectors. (From volume III, chapter 23.) Growth Trends
Over the past twenty years the economy of the Sierra Nevada has diversified and grown.
Small businesses provide more than half the local jobs and are spread across all
sectors of the economy. Manufacturing employment has remained a stable portion of
regional employment because of the growth of non-timber manufacturing on the western edge
of the region. Employment directly related to ecosystem-dependent commodities and
services has grown principally because of the expansion of private sector recreation
and capital-intensive fruit, grape, and vegetable agriculture and related value-added activities
such as wineries. 
 
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