South L.A.'s growing pain

The L.A. Times

Fifteen years after the 1992 riots, South Los Angeles has seen dramatic population shifts — but frustratingly little economic progress.

Latinos are a growing presence in a community that was once the center of African American life. Many middle-class black and Latino families have moved out of the area for better schools and safer streets. Those remaining are disproportionately poorer and have fewer job skills.

New grocery stores have opened since the riots — a longtime goal of residents and activists. Yet the area still suffers the region's highest unemployment and underemployment rates.

By almost any economic measure, South Los Angeles has lost ground compared with the city and county. The area, bordered roughly by the Santa Monica and Century freeways between Alameda Boulevard and west to the city limits, grew jobs by only 0.4% from 1993 to 2005, versus 24.6% growth for L.A. County as a whole, according to the state Employment Development Department. The area's average wage grew 21.3% in that period, versus 47.3% for the county.

Grandiose plans to revive the community as a hub for manufacturing and other service-sector industries are largely unrealized. With so few jobs in the area, many residents commute to low-paying service jobs as maids in airport-area hotels, as day laborers on the Westside or as security guards.

Fourteen percent of the city's labor force now lives in South Los Angeles, but only 3% of jobs in the formal economy are located there

Great moments in urban decline.