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Missing rungs on the ladder to middle-income jobs are making upward social mobility increasingly difficult in California, according to a labor report released Tuesday.

The report, produced by the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment, discusses economic issues currently facing California. Topics from the six-chapter report include the large disparity between high- and low-quality jobs, regional economic differences throughout the state, and the impact of the national recession on workers.

In contrast to the 1960s, when job growth was evenly distributed between “good” and “bad” jobs, the ’90s have displayed a much more polarized trend with relatively little job growth in the middle, according to a chapter on the characteristics of job growth for the last eight years.

In the last decade, job disparities affected the Los Angeles area harder than any other region in California, making moving up in the work force more difficult for its community members.

“The L.A. area is in the eye of the storm,” said ILE Director Ruth Milkman, co-author of the chapter and a professor of sociology at UCLA.

“There is more extreme evidence of the disappearing middle class in L.A. than in the rest of California, and more in California than the U.S.,” she continued.

Economists call this an “hourglass economy,” where fewer and fewer people can make the transition from lower to middle class, Milkman said.

More immigrants, low-paying jobs and a manufacturing-based economy are factors causing the Los Angeles area to experience larger disparities in job quality than in its urban counterpart in the state, the San Francisco Bay area.

In the Bay Area, jobs tend to be better overall, with a more college-educated work force, but the region still has its own employment woes.

“You see people in the Bay Area with a fair amount of education still at the bottom of the totem pole because everyone there is relatively educated,” Milkman said. “Education is not a guarantee.”

The fact that education will not necessarily lead to high-quality jobs, coupled with ever-increasing competition in the work force, is causing many students to seek schooling beyond their undergraduate education.

“I feel like I need to go to graduate school in order to pursue my career goals and be successful,” said second-year political science student Dan Smith. “Higher levels of competition mean that I need to be more of an expert in my field.”

Offering quality education and training for workers will play a large role for upcoming generations in helping to close the gap between the rich and the poor, said Paul Ong, director of the UCLA Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

“In the long run, in order to have a productive society we need a productive, skilled labor force,” Ong said. “We need to offer people opportunities either on the job or in colleges to gain the skills that make them more competitive in the economy.”

But even a skilled work force can be setback by larger economic factors, such as a recession.

In a chapter titled “Recession and Reaction” the labor report discusses the effects of the current recession on California workers.

The energy crisis, dot-com crash and Sept. 11 are all contributors to the current recession, but the report concludes that California’s broad labor force can still rebound.

“The fundamental asset that attracts new investment and production to the state ... is the diversity and skill of the California labor force,” the report stated.