Warehouse construction in San Bernardino. (Photo Credit: John Guenther)
A region of 4.3 million people, the Inland Empire in the past couple years has represented fairly well the promise and challenges of California’s divided economy.
With that in mind–and looking ahead to the 2015 Summit–we’ll be featuring some of the video stories we’ve produced in the Inland Empire since the Summit began. The first set of stories (videos below) highlights the Inland Empire’s logistics role and the attribute of being the last, best region in Southern California with land available for large building expansion and close to infrastructure.
This week, two cities of the “IE” landed at the top of a list of “worst places to find a job” and the region played the setting for a New York Times story on poverty in the suburbs. Unemployment in the metro region covering San Berndardino, Riverside and Ontario stayed at 8.0 percent in November, still above the state average of 7.1 percent.
On the other hand, an October report showed that only the Bay Area increased its number of jobs at a greater rate than the Inland Empire, the region that accounted for two-thirds of the new California businesses formed from 2012 to 2013.
All of this makes it significant that the California Economic Summit in 2015 will be held in the Inland Empire, in Ontario specifically. And people are taking notice.
Since the state isn’t made of just one economy, there’s a lot for this year’s Summit to address, like the low educational attainment levels of just this one region, which can hinder economic mobility of residents and hinder company expansion.
And infrastructure maintenance, the lack of which was highlighted in the Governor’s State of the State/inauguration speech on Monday, is vital to the region where goods movement reigns. That’s because the region is a logistics and warehousing hub for Southern California, with the nearby Los Angeles and Long Beach ports feeding goods through the area.
Amazon invades the Inland Empire
Inland Empire: Last, best region for big business expansion in Southern California
