New Report Says IE Is At ‘Economic Crossroads’

A new report released last week by the Inland Empire Labor and Community Center (IELCC) at UC Riverside found that, without intervention, current economic trends in the Inland Empire could negatively impact the region.

The State of Workers in the IE report looked at wage patterns, employment structures, income inequality and the cost of living in the area to assess how economic shifts have affected workers and households in both Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“It’s really important for [IELCC] and for our region to work collectively when tackling issues of housing, workforce development and transportation,” Jesus “Chuy” Flores, policy and strategy director for IELCC, said. “So this report is just one way we’re trying to show how we’re more similar than we’re different, and how these challenges are affecting all of us.”

According to the report, workers in the region experience issues related to job quality and access, persistent and racialized wage inequality and increased cost burdens that specifically impact renters making the full cost of living out of reach for many. 

“A lot of people moved to the Inland Empire for the affordable housing…[which] has actually ended up translating into making it unaffordable for those that have called the Inland Empire home for a very long time,” Cheylynda Barnard, IELCC executive director and Moreno Valley councilmember, said. “But what I’m actually learning [by] talking to my constituents is rent is oftentimes costing them more than the mortgages, but they also can’t get into the houses, because the houses are so expensive.”

The report also found that many of those who live in the region often have to commute elsewhere for work.

“We have roughly 25% of residents reporting that they don’t work within either Riverside and San Bernardino counties,” Flores said. “[This] helps us [understand] why our highways are always so clogged up and why a lot of communities in our region are sort of quiet most of the day, because folks are just spending a lot of their time on the road getting to work.”

But the issues facing workers in the region cannot be addressed without policy intervention, which is why the report provided five ways to address them including diversifying employment options, supporting wage equity, investing in affordable housing, expanding access to childcare and early education and improving public transportation infrastructure. 

“I’m hoping the outcome [of this report] is that people realize that the Inland Empire is no longer a sleepy bedroom community,” Barnard said. “It’s a community that needs investment in diversification of different sectors of work.”

And, Barnard said, it’s going to be up to the workers in many cases to start these conversations with their elected officials.

“It’s up to you, the workers, whether that’s through organizing, demanding meetings with policy makers — and not just your local policymakers but at the federal and the state level,” she said. “And telling them you need these adjustments made, and that they need to show you that they support the workers and that they believe in it, and that they’re not just trying to create a two-class system of essentially poor people and rich people.”

The report also highlighted the importance of the region’s undocumented population at a time when U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting raids across the state.

“We just want to elevate and know that they’re a critical part of our region and none of our restaurants and none of our warehousing and a lot of the things we enjoy are not possible without their labor,” Flores said.

David Mickey-Pabello, research director for IELCC, said that this year’s report is the first of what the center is hoping becomes an annual report to track the ever changing nature of work in the region.

“Going forward, we want this to be our cornerstone report every year,” he said. “This is kind of the same statistics that we’re reporting over and over and over again to kind of keep a pulse on labor in the IE and the workers, in particular.”

The report also shows just how rapidly the IE’s population is growing. The region is currently on pace to become a larger population hub than Los Angeles and Orange counties by 2040, Barnard said.

“We’re a very vast and very large region, and at the end of the day, I hope, if they take nothing else from this report, it’s that they better respect the Inland Empire,” she said. “Eventually, we will be the big dogs in the room, and you’ll have to reconcile with us.”