According to the San Benito County Crop Report, the 2009 gross value of the county’s five crop and livestock categories was $243.3 million. That’s impressive. Agriculture in all its forms and related jobs is a vital local industry. However, the biggest “business” of San Benito County residents is commuting – people getting into a car, bus or train and going to work elsewhere so they can make a lot more money.
During 2009, the county’s out-commuters – people who lived here but worked somewhere else – brought $737.9 million back in salaries, wages, and proprietary earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s three times the gross value of the entire crop report. The county also has in-commuters – people who live somewhere else but work here – they took $206.5 million home the same year. The annual net result is called the Residence Adjustment; ours was a positive $531.4 million, or $9,650 per capita. When the government calculates personal income data for San Benito County, they add that in.
Our residence adjustment is more than twice that of Monterey County. Fresno County has a residence adjustment of negative $173 million, as they have more commuter earnings leaving the county than coming in. The biggest loser in commuter gross earning flows is the economic giant, Santa Clara County, at $15 billion annually. The reason is obvious – Santa Clara is a massive labor importer; besides which, they get much of it back through economic activity, something we lack.
Economic activity is the other side of the equation. One good measure is the generation of sales and use taxes. In 2009-10 California distributed $209.5 million of sales and use taxes to the entities in Santa Clara County, which came to $117 per capita. It’s not just the dollar figure – think of how much economic activity those taxes represent. Overall, Fresno received $80 per capita and Monterey County received $85 per capita. San Benito County received only $58 per capita – the lowest relative level of economic activity in the six-county area, just behind Merced.
From 1980 to 2000, county farm income rose only 113 percent; however, non-farm income ballooned a whopping 612 percent, and the primary reason was the growing residential adjustment – commuter earnings. They made up 12 percent of the county personal net earnings before dividends, interest, rents, and transfers in 1980. It grew to 18 percent in 1990 and 44 percent in 2000. However, relatively little of it was spent here except for housing and food. The vast majority of the disposable income went to the shopping in Santa Clara, online, or to recreation in the coastal counties and other tourist havens.
The county’s limited farm income worked for decades. Acreage alone needs few public services. But population brings costs – police, fire, sewer, schools and roads, among others. Regular economic activity must generate income to support those activities, but somehow we skipped that part, especially considering the millions of dollars we poured into redevelopment.
There is something fundamentally wrong with our approach, and I do not believe that it is all bad luck. The figures show that the income is here, but we lack the required economic activity. We have too few venues for entertainment, accommodation, food service or shopping.
San Benito County had $1.9 billion in personal income, or $35,500 for every resident in 2009. Surely we can figure out a way to get someone to spend some of that here. If one is looking for excuses not to progress because it’s hard work or because it might bring competition, they are easy to find.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident whose column appears Tuesdays.
