Orange County’s 50 largest employers added jobs in the past year, the second straight annual gain after years of belt-tightening.
Driving the job growth: a new nursing law that prompted hiring by some hospitals, expansion at local universities and growth at mortgage lenders,which are starting to give back some of their gains.
The 50 largest employers here count 210,384 local workers, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
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The total is up 2% from a year ago, after adjusting for two hospital operators that traded a handful of facilities.
The gain is in line with the county’s overall projected job growth rate of 1.7% this year. The list includes big retailers, banks, telecommunications companies and others.
The employers on last year’s list posted a 3% hiring gain.
Overall, “We expected to see slower job growth this year because of interest-rate sensitive categories, mainly in the real estate and construction sector,” said Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University in Orange.
Interest rate fallout stands to play out next year, too.
Earlier this month, the parent company of Orange-based Ameriquest Mortgage Corp. said it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, or about 1,500 people nationwide.
We’ve adjusted No. 6 Ameriquest Capital Corp. down an estimated 10% in local employment. The company, which runs several mortgage lending businesses, is projected to employ 6,300 people locally after the cuts play out.
Other mortgage-related companies hired in the past year.
No. 36 First American Corp., the Santa Ana-based title insurer, grew local employment 8% to 2,325 people in the past year. A year earlier, First American had cut 2% of its OC jobs in anticipation of a mortgage slowdown.
No. 43 New Century Financial Corp., an Irvine-based mortgage lender that first appeared on the list last year, saw a 1% gain in employment to 1,969 people, moving it up one spot.
The list includes several Business Journal estimates for employers that didn’t provide jobs numbers. Without estimates, employment was up 4%, to 178,779 jobs.
In all, 29 of the companies on the list added jobs in the past year. Ten had stable employment. Eleven companies posted employment declines. Estimated changes were included in the analysis.
Disney Tops
Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. claimed the No. 1 spot again with 21,000 OC workers, up about 1,000 people from a year ago.
Disney’s figure is a yearly average of employment at its Anaheim theme parks, hotels and other operations.
Employment is up with Disneyland’s 50th anniversary marketing push that kicked off in May.
Disney’s increase came despite the sale of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim hockey team earlier this year to Henry Samueli of Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp., and his wife Susan.
Some notable gains:
n No. 32 The Irvine Company. The real estate owner, manager and developer increased employment 37% to 2,600 people locally in the past year, moving it up 13 spots on the list.
The company added 706 jobs in the past year, notably when it took over management of the Four Seasons Hotel Newport Beach, now called the Island Hotel Newport Beach.
n No. 7 California State University, Fullerton. The school a year ago cut 5% of its workers after losing some state funding. The trend was reversed in the past year, with a 15% gain for a total of 5,256 jobs.
A spokeswoman said the hirings came with “record enrollment” of more than 35,000 students.
“This creates a need for more faculty, student services and technical support workers,” she said.
The county’s other dominant university, University of California, Irvine, lost 25 jobs but kept its No. 2 spot on the list with 16,229 jobs.
Acquisitions and a state nursing law prompted hiring at hospitals.
No. 13 Memorial Health Services Inc. saw a 9% gain in jobs to 4,663 people when 389 jobs were added to the Long Beach-based hospital chain with its buy of San Clemente Hospital in February. Nurse hirings and stepped up recruiting also added to Memorial’s workforce, a spokeswoman said.
Nurse Surge
Hospitals on the list saw higher employment thanks to the state’s nurse ratio law, which was set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2005, but was challenged in court by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
After the defeat of propositions backed by Schwarzenegger in the Nov. 8 election, the governor dropped his legal challenge to the nurse staffing law.
Most local hospitals ignored Schwarzenegger’s challenge and hired more nurses.
No. 16 Kaiser Permanente, an Oakland-based hospital operator, increased local employment 24% to 4,550 people. No. 4 St. Joseph Health System of Orange saw a 4% gain to 9,385 OC workers.
No. 21 Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach saw employment rise 9% to 3,607 as it opened its $200 million Sue and Bill Gross Women’s Pavilion this fall.
Another healthcare company, No. 8 PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. of Cypress, saw a 6% jump to 5,074 people as the health insurer provider readied to offer Medicare drug coverage plans. PacifiCare is being acquired by Minnesota’s UnitedHealth Group Inc.
No. 10 Tenet Healthcare Corp., a Dallas-based hospital operator, slipped five spots on the list as it saw a 30% decline in OC jobs to 4,986 people.
Tenet sold four local hospitals to Costa Mesa-based Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc. earlier this year.
Integrated debuts as No. 30 on the list with 2,829 local workers, up from virtually none a year ago.
In our analysis, we treated Integrated’s job gain as a transfer of workers from Tenet, as opposed to newly created positions.
Retailers posted gains, including No. 12 Target Corp., which saw a 15% increase in local jobs to 4,886.
No. 23 Safeway Inc., operator of Vons and Pavilions supermarkets, was up 19% to 3,461 local jobs.
No. 9 Home Depot Inc. of Atlanta saw local employment rise 5% to 5,000. It has 20 stores in the county, having added one in the past year in Orange.
Some notable losses:
Employment at Boeing Co., the county’s third largest employer, fell 1%, or by 128 people, to 12,042 workers. The decline is due to normal fluctuations, a spokeswoman said, and comes after years of heady hiring.
No. 37 Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter Inc. saw employment in Fullerton and Brea fall nearly 5% to 2,217 people, causing it to slip two spots on the list.
The company, which makes testing gear for medical laboratories and researchers, had announced plans this past summer to cut 350 jobs as part of a restructuring that includes combining its clinical diagnostics business and its smaller biomedical research unit into one. About 100 jobs were lost locally.
Decliners, Newcomers
Other decliners included No. 39 St. John Knits International Inc. of Irvine, which saw a 20% loss of local jobs, and No. 40 Pacific Life Insurance Co. of Newport Beach, which reported a 19% drop.
Besides Integrated, No. 49 Cypress-based Real Mex Restaurants Inc. debuted on the list. The operator of El Torito restaurants counts an estimated 1,600 local workers and moved its headquarters from Long Beach in August.
No. 50 Quiksilver Inc., a Huntington Beach-based apparel maker, also made the list for the first time. The surfwear maker saw a 4% increase in local jobs to 1,585 people.
