By Dr. John E. Warren – Publisher
The City of San Diego’s Civil Service Commission has been charged with preparing an Annual Equal Employment Report to provide a year to year comparison of the ethnic and gender breakdown of the city of San Diego workforce. This mandate was the result of San Diego City Council action adopted February 25, 1991. The report released last week for the year December 2012 through December 2013 provides some very interesting insights in ethnic break outs for Whites, African Americans, Hispanic or Latinos, Asian and Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Two or more and other, and Women. Of particular interest was the disproportionate number of African Americans identified in positions and the absence of any specific mention of San Diego’s African populations.
This article looks at five of the categories listed in this year’s report: (1) Officials and Managers requiring occupational and management personnel to set policies; (2) Professionals – occupations requiring college graduation or experience in an amount to provide comparable background; (3) Technicians – generally a combination of basic scientific knowledge; (4) Laborers and Helpers – working in manual occupations generally requiring no special training to perform; and (5) Administrative Support Workers – all clerical type work regardless of level of difficulty. Added to these are the areas of Public Safety including police officers and fire fighters.
In taking the last two categories, first we find that fire fighters in the city’s workforce were 384 employees in number (or 68.9%). African Americans numbered only 20 employees as fire fighters (or 3.6% of that workforce), and Latinos numbered 105 employees (or 18.9 %) of that department’s workforce, not counting officers and investigative positions for either group identified here. In looking at the report on the San Diego Police Department, it was revealed that 807 officers (or 64.4%) are White; 72 officers (or 5.7%) are Black or African American and 250 officers (or 19.9 %) are Latinos. For the City’s Lifeguards, the figures revealed that 387 lifeguards are White or 74.7% while 12 are African American (or 2.3 %) and 89 or (17.2%) were Latinos.
Of the five categories mentioned above, the category “Professionals” had the highest number of Whites at 1102 employees making up 51.9 % of that category workforce with African American only having 183 total positions for 8.6% of the jobs at that level. The second highest number of employees in this category is Latinos, with 417 employees (or 18.6%) of the jobs in this area. Asians and Pacific Islanders came in third with 398 employees for 18 % of the jobs.
White employees dominated Technicians at 41.7% of the jobs to African Americans with the lowest number of 13.5% compared to Latinos at 23.8% of the jobs. The same was true for Administrative Support Workers where White employees were 38.4% holding 630 jobs compared to 306 jobs or 18.6% being held by African Americans and 424 (or 25.8%) of the jobs being held by Latinos. In the category of Laborer and Helpers, Latinos held 480 positions for 42.9% of the jobs while African Americans held 304 positions for 26.6% of the jobs and Whites held only 269 jobs for 23.5% in this category.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Report tied these numbers to the City and County of San Diego’s demographics for each of the ethnic and gender groups identified. The report attempted to show the availability in the workforce for each group, in an effort to line up the numbers holding jobs with the number of people in the city and county available for work in each group. There was nothing to suggest that matching demographics to positions equal the best and only people available for the positions held. Hopefully this report will generate some discussion and investigation as the City of San Diego looks at its 10,000 plus workforce.
