A Question of Severity
Orange County enters the New Year at a turning point.
The county’s economy has succumbed to a national slowdown. The question set to be answered in coming months is one of severity: is OC lagging the nation with more pain to come,as in the early 1990s,or will it skate by with growth, albeit slow, in 2002?
To be sure, this isn’t the early 1990s all over again. The county’s real estate sector is down, but nothing like it was a decade ago. And defense spending is rising, not falling.
And that thud you heard could be OC’s technology sector hitting bottom. More job cuts and losses could be in store, but other signs point to a subtle bounce in 2002 for chipmakers and other tech companies.
OC’s economic diversity,which has grown in the past decade,also augurs against a prolonged downturn. As tech and real estate have slipped, the county’s drug makers, medical device companies and apparel designers have joined defense in the growth column.
But it’s worth noting that many pundits had predicated OC already would be growing faster by now. That goalpost now has been pushed back to midyear at best.
In our annual forecast issue, we take a look at the year ahead and back at continuing trends from 2001, starting on page 4.
