Orange County’s 50 largest employers added jobs in the past year after several years of cutting.
Big employers boosted workforces by 5,923 jobs for total employment of 210,934 people, according to this week’s Business Journal list. That marks a 3% gain for the largest employers here, on par with the county’s projected 2% job growth this year, according to Chapman University.
The list includes several Business Journal estimates for employers that didn’t provide jobs numbers. Without estimates, employment still was up 3%, to 144,773 jobs.
Unlike prior years, when increases or declines were due mostly to big shifts at one or two dominant employers, this year’s increase was broader.
For the most part, national retailers continued their growth here. Increased defense spending helped spur employment at Boeing Co., the county’s third largest employer. And a state nursing law prompted hiring by hospitals on the list.
In all, 23 of the companies on the list added jobs in the past year. Fifteen had stable emp-loyment. Ten companies posted employment declines in the past year. Estimates were included in the analysis.
Some notable gains:
No. 6 SBC Communications Inc., based in San Antonio, saw an estimated 41% increase to 8,000 local workers after its October buy of AT & T; Wireless. That pushed the company up two spots from last year’s list. But SBC’s gain likely will be short-lived. Last week, SBC’s Cingular Wireless said it plans to cut 7,000 jobs as a result of the deal.
No. 27 Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter Inc. saw employment in Fullerton and Brea jump 28% to 2,928 people. The company, which makes testing gear for medical laboratories and researchers, added sales and service workers after posting “constant growth” in the past few quarters, spokeswoman Anne Warde said.
No. 35 Irvine-based Allergan Inc. increased local employment 28% to 2,430 people with an expansion of the drug maker’s campus and research and development efforts to build up its pipeline.
Those gains and others helped offset big losses from businesses that boomed during the mortgage refinancing boom of the past few years but cut back after the market started cooling in late 2003.
No. 40 First American Corp., the Santa Ana-based title insurer, cut jobs by 2% for a total of 2,161 local workers.
The fallout was more dramatic at No. 29 Washington Mutual Inc. The Seattle-based savings and loan saw a 20% drop in local workers to 2,914 people.
Earlier this year, Washington Mutual closed its 270-worker Fullerton loan processing operation and cut back at its campus in Irvine.
Many retailers on the list posted gains.
Among them was No. 12 Atlanta-based The Home Depot Inc., which saw employment rise 7% to 4,750 workers. The company picked up two OC stores in an 18-store buy from Kmart Holding Corp. in August.
The trend was the opposite for No. 11 Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., operator of Ralphs supermarkets. In fallout from the grocery strike that ended earlier this year, Ralphs closed 15 Southland stores, including three in OC. The result: an estimated 3% job loss at Kroger to 4,570 workers.
The Irvine Company is a newcomer to the list after taking on management of its office buildings and shopping centers in the past two years. The Newport Beach-based real estate owner and developer counts 1,894 local workers, up 9%.
Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. held onto the No. 1 spot with 20,000 workers, unchanged from a year ago. Disney’s figure is a yearly average of employment at its Anaheim theme parks, hotels and other operations, which typically spikes in the summer.
No. 23 Cedar Fair LP, operator of Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, reported flat employment of 3,100 people.
Staying even is welcome news for the theme park operators, which saw business pick up this year after turning down after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The University of California, Irvine, held the No. 2 spot with 16,254 workers on campus and at UCI Medical Center in Orange. The university was up 3% from last year, despite state budget woes.
No. 10 California State University, Full-erton, cut 5% of its workers for a total of 4,579 people after losing some state funding.
All hospitals on the list saw a bump in employment thanks to the state’s nurse ratio law, which was set to take effect Jan. 1 but now has been delayed.
No. 4 St. Joseph Health System in Orange, which runs three hospitals here, upped employment by 1% to 9,064 people in the past year. And No. 16 Long Beach-based Memorial Health Services Inc. grew employment by 2% to 4,294 people at its three OC hospitals.
No. 18 Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach reported a 4% rise to 3,805 people. And No. 47 Orange-based Children’s HealthCare of California, operator of Children’s Hospital of Orange County, grew by 11% to 1,767 workers.
Some noteworthy names aren’t on this year’s list: Foothill Ranch-based apparel maker Oakley Inc. didn’t make the list’s cutoff with 1,154 local workers. The same went for Aliso Viejo engineering services company Fluor Corp., which saw OC employment decrease 28% to 1,394 workers.
Newcomers include a couple of fast-growing mortgage lenders that work with borrowers with imperfect credit: No. 25 Ameriquest Capital Corp. of Orange, which is conservatively estimated up 11% from a year ago to 3,000 workers in Orange, Anaheim and Irvine; and No. 45 Irvine-based New Century Financial Corp., with 1,876 OC workers, up 26% from a year ago.
Jonathan Reagan contributed to this story.
