TIMES ORANGE COUNTY POLL : More Are Finding Less Hope Amid Recession : Economy: Ranks of the pessimists have nearly tripled. A majority don’t expect improvement until next year.

Nearly half of Orange County residents believe the national economy is in a “serious recession”--nearly three times the number who thought so last year--and a majority don’t expect the recession to end until at least early next year, a new poll shows.

And the economic worries are not abstract, but very close to home: 37% say they are concerned that they or someone in their family will lose their job. An additional 7% said they already had lost their job during the recession.

A strong majority rate local business conditions as only fair or poor, and they foresee no improvement in the county’s job outlook before the end of the year.

The Times Orange County Poll of 600 residents, conducted April 2 through 5, stands in stark contrast to countywide polls taken six months and a year ago that showed far more optimism about the U.S. and the local economy. The heightened pessimism also comes at a time when the county’s unemployment rate of 5.6% is the highest since 1984.

In a Times Orange County Poll a year ago, for instance, only 16% of Orange County residents declared the economy in a “serious recession,” compared to 46% who give it that label today. That’s also higher than a national poll conducted by The Times last month in which 35% called it a serious recession.

“I think the decline in consumer confidence is staggering,” said Mark Baldassare of Mark Baldassare & Associates, which conducted the telephone poll. The poll has a 4% margin of error.

“It’s something they really didn’t initially want to believe,” he said, “but it indicates we are moving from the heyday of the ‘80s.”

In fact, 44% of Orange County residents polled said they are worse off than a year ago, while only three in 10 considered themselves better off. That reflects a steady decline since 1986, when UC Irvine’s Orange County Annual Survey found that six in 10 residents believed they were better off than the year before.

In a note of optimism, however, most people said they don’t expect things will get much worse.

Asked to look ahead to a year from now, 49% said they expected things to be about the same for them and 43% said they’ll be better off. A mere 6% said they’ll be worse off and 2% didn’t know.

The majority of Orange County residents--who are historically more upbeat about the economy than most Americans--when surveyed last year thought the nation would have rebounded from its economic malaise by Dec. 31.

With the recession persisting into the second quarter of 1992, the outlook now is much more pessimistic. About 69% of county residents believe there will be no recovery before January, 1993.

Concern about the economy has prompted almost one in four Orange County residents to seriously consider fleeing the high-priced lifestyle of Southern California, which once drew out-of-towners like a siren’s call.

Those responses to the relocation question, asked for the first time in The Times poll, indicate there may be a stall in the county population growth, which saw a 25% jump to 2.4 million people from 1980 to 1990.

The 22% who said they contemplated moving supports state Department of Motor Vehicles records, which show that for the first time since 1970, the number of people licensed to drive moving out of Orange County--either to other California locations or outside the state--exceeded the number of drivers moving into the county.

Poll participant Debbie Franco and her husband, Drake, for instance, say they are throwing in the towel, ending their yearlong struggle for financial solvency.

The income he earns driving a truck part time for a Yorba Linda drywall manufacturer is not nearly enough to support the couple and their three young children.

Squeezed by a monthly rent of $1,100, an apparent dearth of available job openings and an inability to buy such household appliances as a washing machine, Debbie Franco said the family plans to move to Burlington, Wash., this summer.

“It is so depressing,” said Debbie, 29. She says the couple needs to work two full-time jobs “just to survive.”

Despite having filed applications with several prospective employers, Debbie Franco said she has had no luck. “I can’t even get a job at a Carl’s Jr. We just don’t like it here anymore.”

Baldassare and local economists said that the Francos’ plight is a typical reaction to the downward spiral in the once-booming Orange County economy, which fueled heady optimism during the past decade.

“We were really living with very high and perhaps unrealistic expectations in Orange County” in the 1980s, Baldassare said. “The reality of the recession, and it’s a relatively long one, has gotten people very frightened and very pessimistic.”

Homemaker Jeannette Harris, 72, lives with her husband, Archie, an independent paper products broker, in a two-bedroom mobile home in Santa Ana. Harris, who has lived through “quite a few recessions and one big Depression,” said the current economy is the worst she has seen in at least two decades.

Her 65-year-old husband’s monthly commissions have fallen by as much as 20% in the past 18 months, as clients have canceled or reduced orders.

Consequently, the Harrises have been forced to cut back on simple luxuries, such as going to the movies or occasionally eating out at a restaurant. They have also put off plans to buy a new car.

The smaller paychecks have also left them unable to pay all their monthly expenses and have forced them to dip into their savings account, nearly depleting it.

“You cut back when you are not sure of what’s going to be happening,” Jeannette Harris said. “If you don’t, you have problems.”

Chapman University President James L. Doti, an economist, said the negative outlook expressed in the Times Orange County Poll is not surprising, adding that it mirrors national consumer confidence polls.

Orange County residents’ predictions that the recession will last into 1993 were also in line with most predictions by economists--including President Bush’s chief economic adviser, Michael J. Boskin--that the California economy will lag the national recovery by almost a year.

“We’re near the trough of the recession,” Doti said, adding that he expected a general, but weak, national recovery to begin by summer.

When economic indicators begin to show signs that the national recovery is picking up steam, both local businesses and consumers will gain increased confidence, Doti said, which should result in increased sales and job opportunities.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that if a consumer confidence poll were taken later this year,” Doti said, “there will be a marked uptick that will reflect the fact that the economy is improving.”

Chapman University’s annual economic forecast, released in December, predicted a slow recovery for Orange County, with visible signs not expected until the fall--a full 12 months later than predicted when the recession settled in.

Even then, the forecast predicts, the recovery will be slow and plodding through 1993.

In the Times poll, Orange County residents said they were worried about the local business climate and job opportunities through the end of the year.

When asked, 64% said that there would either be fewer jobs or no increase in the number of available jobs by Dec. 31.

Further, only a scant 1% considered the business climate today to be excellent. Interestingly, there was virtually no difference between low- and high-wage earners in their assessment of business conditions.

An additional 22% said they would rate business conditions as “good” in Orange County, while 74% only considered the conditions to be fair or poor.

Thomas Towle of Irvine, however, remains optimistic.

The retired AT&T; employee believes that the Orange County business climate is destined for more growth, rivaling the economic expansion of the ‘80s.

After leaving a 25-year career as an office manager, Towle started a flower shop out of his Irvine home in 1989. Sales more than doubled last year to about $37,000 despite the recession, he said.

“There are 2.4 million people in Orange County and I’m bound to get more business,” he said.

Towle is in the minority. More than half, or 54%, of those surveyed predict the national economy will continue to suffer bad times during the next 12 months, an increase of 9 percentage points over the annual survey conducted last September.

Further, their despondency over the economy appears long term, with 47% believing the nation will suffer from periods of widespread unemployment or depression over the next five years.

And only a bare majority of residents, 53%, believe that now is a good time to buy so-called big-ticket items--cars, furniture or major appliances.

Irvine resident Lois Bushell, 37, who is working as a temporary employee at a plastics manufacturing company, said that discount-seeking consumers can have a field day as stores cut prices to lure customers.

“The ball rolls downhill,” she said. “Businesses are facing the same kind of crunch (as cash-strapped consumers). They need to sell products so they bring down the prices.”

But like others, Bushell said that having extra cash for such spending is becoming rarer all the time. As a worker for a temporary agency, she has taken a cut in hourly pay from $8.85 to $8 in the last year.

“Employers are not willing to hire full-timers,” Bushell said.

Strapped for cash, she often finds herself unable to resist the temptation to charge some necessities, such as gasoline, to make her monthly checks stretch.

And in an increasingly familiar cycle of debt, she uses her savings to pay off her monthly bills, giving her an ever-smaller fund to cover emergencies.

“I have virtually no entertainment money,” she said.

Anil Puri, an economist and co-director of the Institute for Economics and Environmental Studies at Cal State Fullerton, said that while Orange County consumers grouse about the economy, some leading indicators are already beginning to show improvement.

But residents will not sense any relief until businesses again begin to post profits, produce more goods and allocate money for new hiring, which may take 12 months or more to accomplish.

“The economy will have to pick up a little steam before any wide-scale confidence will take place,” he said.

Despite the concerns, Orange County residents continue to be more confident than other Americans. In a five-question section of The Times poll--designed to track a University of Michigan survey--the Orange County consumer confidence index was at 78 points, nine points higher than the national consumer confidence index.

Jim Harlis Jr., 29, a laid-off Anaheim electrician, said he continues to hope the economy will recover soon, even though his 53-year-old electrician father joined him recently in the unemployment line.

“I’m struggling,” the younger Harlis said. “I’ve been looking for a job all over but there’s not much out there for me and I’ve been using my credit card cash advances and unemployment checks to make my truck payments and pay off my rent and utility bills.”

But he said he is seeing more construction work now than in the past year and he is optimistic that he will find steady work in the next few months.

“It’s easier to reach businesses here and there’s enough entertainment” than in Glendale, where he lived four years ago before moving to Orange County. He plans to remain here and said he is “all set to join the economic recovery team.”

O.C. CONSUMER OUTLOOK

Recession Hits Hard; Mood Cautious

In a recent Times Orange County Poll, 46% of county residents said that the current recession is “serious.” This figure is up from only 16% who thought so a year ago. Also, more than two-thirds said the recession won’t be over until at least January, 1993. Highlights from the poll:

Do you think we are in an economic recession? If yes, how serious is it?

O.C. O.C. U.S. ’91 ’92 ’92 Serious 16% 46% 35% Moderate 39% 34% 31% Mild 25% 10% 18% No recession 14% 7% 13% Don’t Know 6% 3% 3%

Are you concerned that you or someone in your family will lose their job during the current recession?

1991 1992 Yes 24% 37% Job lost already 4% 7% No 72% 56%

In the past six months, have you postponed any of these purchases because of the recession?

1991 1992 Major household items 40% 46% Car 37% 47% House 28% 34%

What about business conditions in the country as a whole? Do you think that during the next 12 months we will have good times financially or bad times?

1991 1992 Good times 41% 37% Bad times 45% 54% Don’t know 14% 9%

Source: Times Orange County Poll, 1991 and 1992; Orange County Annual Survey, UC Irvine, 1991; Time Poll, 1992

Rating O.C.’s Economy

What residents said about Orange County business conditions and their consumer confidence:

How would you rate business conditions today in Orange County? Excellent: 1% Good: 22% Fair: 49% Poor: 25% Don’t know: 3%

By the end of 1992, what will job opportunities in Orange County be like compared to today? Increase: 32% Decrease: 27% Remain the same: 37% Don’t know: 4%

As far as your own situation, would you say you are financially better off or worse off than you were a year ago?

Better off Worse off Same O.C. 1991 37% 28% 35% O.C. 1992 29% 44% 27% U.S. 1992 30% 39% 31%

Looking ahead, do you think that a year from now you will be better off, worse off, or about the same as now?

Better off Worse off Same Don’t know O.C. 1991 50% 9% 37% 4% O.C. 1992 43% 6% 49% 2% U.S. 1992 36% 13% 47% 4%

Source: Times Orange County Poll, 1992; Orange County Annual Survey, UC Irvine, 1991; University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Survey, 1992

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Orange County Poll was conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates. The telephone survey of 600 Orange County adults was conducted April 2 through 5. The sample was statistically weighted to reflect the actual population distribution of Orange County residents. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus four percentage points at the 95% confidence level. That means it is 95% certain the results are within four percentage points of what they would be if every adult resident were interviewed. All respondents were guaranteed anonymity; however, some of those polled agreed to be re-interviewed for these stories.