TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

National magazines love to bash the greater Bakersfield area. This week, it's an online business magazine that ranked Kern County dead last on quality of life out of 67 metropolitan areas it examined nationwide.

Portfolio.com evaluated 2006-2008 American Community Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, comparing Kern County with other markets on such criteria as healthy economies, light traffic, moderate costs of living, housing stock and educational systems.

Greater Raleigh, N.C., ranked highest for its population growth, low unemployment, new home inventory and well-educated workforce.

Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis-St. Paul came in second and third, respectively.

The study looked at metropolitan statistical areas, which for Bakersfield mirrors Kern County boundaries.

Kern was joined in the bottom five by Fresno, New Orleans, Memphis and Riverside-San Bernardino.

G. Scott Thomas, who wrote about the findings for Portfolio.com, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

But on the website, he wrote that greater Bakersfield "has the highest poverty rate of any major market, as well as the lightest concentration of management and professional jobs, weakest inventory of big houses, and smallest percentages in the three educational categories that track adults with high-school diplomas, bachelor's degrees, and advanced degrees."

Slightly more than a quarter of Kern County's civilian, employed adults are managers or professionals, for instance, compared with 44.3 percent in the Raleigh area.

Kern County's median household income was $46,442, compared with nearly $61,000 in the Raleigh area, the survey said.

There are scores of magazine rankings published every year, and Bakersfield ranks high or low nationally depending on the criteria used, said Richard Chapman, president and CEO of the Kern Economic Development Corp.

"I'm from North Carolina, and I would much rather live in Bakersfield than Raleigh," he said. "The humidity there is a killer."

Still, Chapman conceded that the cyclical nature of two key Bakersfield industries -- oil and agriculture -- contributes to economic instability.

But the news wasn't all bad. Looking at individual categories, Kern County ranked No. 23 for new homes built since 1990.

And those homes are among the most affordable in the state, said Gail Malouf, an agent with Coldwell Banker Preferred and president of the Bakersfield Association of Realtors.

"We get a lot of people wanting to move here for that reason, and even people buying as investors," she said. "Our inventory is not junk. There are good quality homes here, all sizes and price ranges."

Kern County came in at No. 14 on traffic for its average commute of 22.8 minutes. Compare that with, say, the average 34.6-minute drive in dead last New York City.

"Comparatively, our traffic is modest," said Ron Brummett, executive director of Kern Council of Governments. "The Los Angeles average is 11 miles per hour, and we're nowhere near that.

"We have maybe an hour of congestion in the morning and an hour in the evening, where L.A. has congestion 22 or 23 hours a day."

Still, there's no getting around the unemployment issue.

Kern County historically has had higher unemployment than the rest of California, and California unemployment tends to outpace the rest of the nation.

Kern's unemployment rate was 16.5 percent in April, according to the California Employment Development Department.

Educational attainment here is another issue that isn't easy to solve.

Only about 10 percent of county residents have a bachelor's degree.

"We do a really, really good job with training for technical and specialty careers here," said Bakersfield College spokeswoman Amber Chiang. "But there is only one university in town that is an affordable, four-year institution.

"We're a poor county. Students have families and have to work, so to go out of town for an education really isn't feasible."