Steady manufacturing employment in recent years has helped Orange County hold the No. 8 spot nationally among metropolitan areas as other places have shrunk.
But what exactly makes up the county’s 183,400 manufacturing jobs is another matter.
“It’s messy,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., which also tracks OC. “The government system isn’t the best in counting jobs.”
Manufacturing job counts by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics may be imperfect because of flawed accounting, according to Kyser.
The government designates positions far removed from the factory floor as manufacturing jobs, he said.
Take video game developers or auto designers. There are no government codes to account for them, according to Kyser. It’s possible they get lumped into OC’s manufacturing job tally.
The scope of the classification issue is unclear. But it could be sizable in OC, where many companies design products and have them made elsewhere.
The government breaks down manufacturing by durable goods built to last 10 years or more and nondurable goods that don’t last as long.
Durable goods are further grouped into 10 categories to capture jobs in aerospace, machinery, metal fabrication and other areas.
Nondurable goods include makeup, office supplies and clothes.
The bulk of the county’s manufacturing workers produce durable goods, about 128,200 of them in 2006. The rest, 55,200, make nondurable goods.
Among durable goods, computer and electronic manufacturing are the biggest group at 42,100 jobs.
The computer and electronic group is broken down into three smaller groups: semiconductor and electronic manufacturing; electronic instrument manufacturing; and residual-magnetic media manufacturing.
One of the biggest employers in the semiconductor and electronic group is Newport Beach-based Conexant Systems Inc., with about 3,000 workers, according to the government.
But Conexant also seems to be a sign of the government’s flawed accounting. The company employs about 400 people in OC, most of them engineers. Companywide, Conexant employs about 3,200 people, many of them in India.
Another chipmaker, Irvine-based Micro-semi Corp., is listed as having about 2,000 workers.
Microsemi is one of the few companies to actually make chips locally, at a plant in Garden Grove. But it only employs about 280 local workers, versus 2,000 worldwide.
Jobs in fabricated metal are the second biggest in the durable goods category at 23,300 workers.
Counted among nondurable goods makers are drug makers, clothing companies and even small bakeries.
Huntington Beach-based clothing designer Quiksilver Inc. has its clothes made outside the county. But it has at least 250 manufacturing jobs locally, according to the government.
Quiksilver has about 1,700 local employees, including some that could produce prototypes or do finish work. Others work in the company’s warehouses.
The best guess of economists is that most local manufacturing is done by companies making advanced tools and parts for computers, autos and planes.
“Manufacturing is becoming increasingly sophisticated,” Kyser said.
Some local manufacturers are big with hundreds of employees. But most are smaller businesses.
Less than 1% of the county’s manufacturers have 500 or more workers, according to a report by Kyser.
Those with 100 to 249 workers have the largest number of workers at 35,732.
Most manufacturers, 36%, are companies with four or fewer workers.
California’s Employment Development Department forecasts 192,800 manufacturing jobs in OC by 2014, a 5% rise increase from 2006.
