The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

Arts and cultural institutions enrich the communities of the Los Angeles region through art exhibits, cultural activities, and educational programs. Many museums have adopted outreach strategies and developed programs that respond to and embrace regional growth and increasing diversity, but substantial challenges remain to their efforts to reach all groups and communities.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, the Japanese American National Museum, the Skirball Cultural Center, and the Museum of Tolerance participated in this study because of their commitment to serve the region’s diverse communities. This report contributes to this effort by providing a geographic perspective on neighborhood-level usage patterns and by suggesting ways the arts and cultural community can continue to diversify its base of support and visitation.

This study was funded by the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency. In accordance with AB 2985, our analysis highlights the characteristics of the workforce most at risk of wage and hours violations, describes the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) efforts to enforce these violations, and presents a set of recommendations to improve enforcement strategies. To complete the study we relied on the synthesis of state documentation, publicly available data on the workforce, and state administrative data. When appropriate, and the available data permit, we compare the environment and operations in California to Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington, and compare workers and firms associated with complaints and enforcement to noncomplaint/ enforcement workers and firms.

This research project is based on the belief that public policy must respond to the problems of how changes in the new economy adversely affect the health of workers and their families. Despite California’s recent business boom, structural changes are reproducing low-wage and contingent employment and increasing worker health and safety risks. A growing segment of California’s working families is struggling simply to make ends meet, and minorities and immigrants are disproportionately over-represented in this labor market niche. In our political economy, societal institutions can and must play a role in promoting better public policy, and organizations that provide a collective voice for workers are central to improving work conditions and access to health care.

In the past three decades, the Los Angeles region has witnessed a large-scale spatial reorganization of poverty. Where once concentrated poverty was confined to neighborhoods in the inner-city, it has since spread to the suburbs. This shifting concentration of poor neighborhoods is driven mainly by immigration and broader changes in the regional economy. Increasing economic mobility for second and subsequent generations of immigrants through education is the region's key challenge.

To meet the demands of the changing labor market it is important for human resources management to improve and enhance their knowledge of the workforce. This report profiles the labor force in Southern California for Human Resources Round Table (HARRT) and presents key findings regarding diversity and aging. This report will provide employers with basic trends and implications and will help promote potential strategies to improve practice in shaping the quality of the workforce. This report is structured around five research objectives: • Analyze labor force trends in Southern California from 1980 to 2010. • Compare Southern California to the state and nation. • Profile labor force by gender, ethnicity, education, etc. • Examine the size of the older labor force. • Identify implications for employers.

Changes in the economic conditions are responsible for broad gains and losses across a region, but the ways that these changes play out at a neighborhood level throughout the region are not uniform. Neighborhoods may benefit or suffer disproportionately according to their mix of jobs and income sources, and the ability to respond to new conditions depends on the resources avialable to residents. Spatial differences in economic outcomes have been linked to secular economic changes in which the economy undergoes structural transformations. Communities are also influenced by the short-run up and down variation that are collectively referred to as the business cycle. In the past, little attention has been given to the effects of cyclical contractions and expansions on neighborhoods. This report represents an important first step in understanding the dynamic nature of neighborhood response to cyclical economic fluctuations, but mor study is clearly required. To facilitate such studies, we strongly recommend new efforts to make existing data available to researchers and to explore new avenues of data collection.

To meet the demands of the changing labor market it is important for human resources management to improve and enhance their knowledge of the workforce. This report profiles the labor force in Southern California for Human Resources Round Table (HARRT) and presents key findings regarding diversity and aging. This report will provide employers with basic trends and implications and will help promote potential strategies to improve practice in shaping the quality of the workforce. This report is structured around five research objectives:

-Analyze labor force trends in Southern California from 1980 to 2010, -Compare Southern California to the state and nation. -Profile labor force by gender, ethnicity, education, etc. -Examine the size of the older labor force. -Identify implications for employers.

We conduct a historical and projected analysis of the labor force utilizing demographic and socioeconomic characteristics from 1980 to 2010. The presentation of results is divided into five sections:

-Overall Population Trends -Labor Force Trends -Labor Force Composition -Size of Older Work Force -Implications

This issue brief discusses the possibility of a premium assistance program in California that targets recent welfare recipients by addressing three main policy questions.

1) Are welfare recipients a good target population for a premium assistance program?

2) Who would be elligible for premium assistance and where do they work?

3) What are the challenges of premium assistance programs in California?

This report combines analysis of firm-level insurance data with welfare and employment information to explore the availability of employment-based insurance for welfare recipients who are transitioning into the labor market in Los Angeles county. To understand the complex and dynamic nature of this issue, multiple data sources are utilized to provide information from the perspective of both welfare recipients who are transitioning into the labor market (laborsupply side) and the firms that employ them (labor-demand side). The primary data sources include an employer benefits survey completed in 2000, administrative welfare and employment data covering a period from 1996-2001, and a survey of recent welfare recipients conducted in 2002/2003.