Los Angeles job growth flat while San Francisco booms, report says

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - The number of private sector jobs in the Los Angeles area has remained relatively flat over the past quarter century, while employment in the San Francisco Bay Area has boomed, a report by a business group shows. The report by the California Center for Jobs & the Economy, based on federal and state employment figures, showed that the number of non-farm private sector jobs in Los Angeles County was up by just 1 percent in the past 24 years. The number of private sector jobs in the San Francisco region, by contrast, grew by 25 percent from 1990 to 2014, outpacing its population growth. The report credits the San Francisco region's position as a technology center for the Bay Area's growth. Los Angeles, by contrast, did not have a similar reinvention of its economic base, and private sector jobs barely recovered from hits in the 1990s to its manufacturing sector, the report said. The report also showed that in both regions, the number of blue-collar jobs paying middle-class wages had declined, replaced to a large extent by the lowest paying positions. The California Center for Jobs & the Economy is a non-profit project of the California Business Roundtable, a business group. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Eric Beech)