With a run-up in hiring for an expanded Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney Co. reclaimed its spot as Orange County’s largest employer this year after finishing in a dead heat last year with Boeing Co. In the past year, Disney reported an 11% increase to 15,354 workers, or more than 1,500 new jobs, according to this week’s Business Journal list of the county’s largest employers. The new jobs come as Disney staffs up for its California Adventure theme park and related projects set to open in the next two months. Disney’s figure is a yearly average of its employment, which typically spikes in the summer. The company’s current OC tally stands at about 16,500 jobs, with recent hiring pushing Disney above its summer peak. Boeing fell to No. 3 on the list with a 12% decline to 12,159 workers after the aerospace giant laid off 900 people in Huntington Beach in June and moved some of its Delta rocket operations out of state.
The University of California, Irvine, moved into the No. 2 spot on the strength of a 5% jump to 14,130 employees, or about 1,200 behind Disney’s average for the year. UCI’s new hires were mainly in the biological and health sciences, engineering, computer science and the physical sciences. UCI plans a major expansion and more hiring in the next decade, including 500 new faculty positions, according to Executive Vice Chancellor Michael Gottfredson. UCI is a targeted-growth campus within the University of California system and is attracting about an additional 1,000 students per year, he said. “We’re expecting this current growth trend to last well into the foreseeable future,” Gottfredson said. “This means 50% growth across the board in terms of both students and faculty by the end of the decade.” Still, UCI will have stepped up competition from Disney, which has hired roughly 6,500 workers in recent months and is looking for a thousand or so more before its new park opens in February. Some of those employees already are on the Disney payroll. But many of them won’t start until early 2001 and were not included in this year’s total. Once the new Disney operations are fully staffed, it stands to hold on to the top spot for a while. At that point, Disney is likely to “hire during peak times and go back to seasonal hiring,” according to company spokesman Ray Gomez. Park positions still to be filled include those in food operations, transportation, custodial work, attractions and guest services. Hideo Amemiya, Disney’s vice president of resort hotels, said hotel positions were filling fast, though there still is need for housekeeping staff. In all, the county’s 50 largest employers account for 194,504 jobs, compared to 192,609 last year. That’s up just 1%, compared to a 2.8% county-wide job growth rate for the 12 months ended in October. The meager job growth rate isn’t unusual for the county’s largest employers, which are dominated by healthcare companies and retailers. The companies on the list, many of which are headquartered outside OC, grew company-wide employment to 5.3 million jobs, a 10% gain from last year, lending credence to the claim that a tight job market has made it a difficult year for local employers. Other factors contributing to the relatively soft local job growth among this year’s largest employers were acquisitions, consolidations and layoffs at roughly a dozen of the companies.
Some Up, Some Down
Among the largest 10 employers on the list, five grew their OC presence in the past year. Three,Boeing, No. 5 St. Joseph Health System and No. 9 BankAmerica Corp.,shrank their workforces. Comparison figures for No. 4 Albertson’s Inc., which completed its acquisition of Lucky supermarket parent American Stores Co. a year ago, are an estimate because 1999 totals were not available in the midst of the acquisition. No. 7 Louisville, Ky.-based Tricon Global Restaurants Inc.,parent company of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut,has been trimming jobs at Taco Bell’s Irvine headquarters over the past few years as part of a company-wide streamlining. But OC job numbers for all three operations were not available and are estimated. Boeing’s 12% slide this year comes after the company increased its local workforce in 1999 by moving jobs to Anaheim, Huntington Beach and Seal Beach from elsewhere in California. Bank of America closed its mortgage operation in Cypress. Its 8% reduction in OC jobs matches the level at which the bank shed jobs throughout California during the past year as some operations for the Charlotte, N.C.-based company were consolidated outside the state. At St. Joseph Health System, Orange, employment fell 4% to 7,354 from 7,670 reported at the same time last year. But another hospital operator, No. 6 Tenet Healthcare Corp., grew its employment to 6,735, up 1% from 6,639 last year. The Santa Barbara-based company has nine local facilities. Tenet, as part of its growth strategy, is trying to gain access to as many health-maintenance organizations contracts as possible, according to Ken Westbrook, a Tenet regional senior vice president. Besides Disney, the only top 10 company with double-digit growth was Marriott International Inc., which jumped seven spots to No. 10 from No. 17 last year by growing its workforce 25% to 4,939 employees. Doug Watson, general manager of the Anaheim Marriott, the company’s largest OC hotel, attributed the growth to new hotels coming on the market and higher occupancy rates that translate into more jobs.
Top 10 Have Lion’s Share
In all, the largest 10 companies on this year’s list employ 87,074,or 45% of the total on this year’s list. The list ranks employers by the number of OC jobs (both full-time and part-time) and includes corporations, hospitals and universities. It excludes government units and school and community college districts. The cutoff to be counted among this year’s largest 50 was 1,583,almost 200 employees more than the cutoff last year. That higher threshold came on the strength of eight newcomers to the list, with No. 14 Verizon Communications, No. 17 Home Depot Inc. and No. 29 Washington Mutual Inc. debuting in the highest spots. Other newcomers included No. 40 The May Co.; No. 45 Alstyle Apparel Activewear/A & G; Inc.; No. 47 Vanguard Health Systems; No. 48 AutoNation Inc.; and No. 50 First American Corp.
That group of newcomers employed more than 19,000 in OC. Of the 48 companies that provided job figures, 28 companies increased employment, 15 cut jobs and five reported no change. Seattle-based Washington Mutual led job growth on the list with a whopping 87% increase to 2,524 jobs due to the acquisition of a subprime lender and the expansion of its securities and mutual fund operations in Irvine. Other companies that bolstered their ranks by at least 15% were:
—No. 35 Cedar Fair LP, the Sandusky, Ohio parent company of Knott’s Berry Farm, up 38% due to the addition of water park Soak City and the debut of its remodeled Radisson hotel, which was not fully staffed last year. Like Disney, Cedar Fair’s numbers are a mid-point between season highs and lows.
—No. 45, Anaheim-based Alstyle Apparel, grew its workforce 31% to 1,700 employees. The maker of T-shirts and sportswear, which is the second-largest apparel company in OC, has consolidated six OC sites into a new Anaheim building and is growing its own brands as well as producing sportswear for the likes of Nike, Guess? and Old Navy.
—Beverly Hills-based No. 34 Hilton Hotels bolstered its numbers with the opening of new hotels and increasing the ranks at existing ones. Hilton’s workforce grew 18% to 2,325.
—Atlanta-based Home Depot grew 18% with two new stores in OC as well as an EXPO design center headquarters. Home Depot is expanding the Expo Design Center concept, which could bring more jobs to Irvine at the aerospace campus of No. 45 Parker Hannifin Corp. (see related story, page 3).
—Newport Beach-based Conexant Systems,one of only seven technology and telecommunications companies on the list,ranks No. 23, up from No. 28 last year on 15% job growth to 3,000. Conexant had been planning an expansion that would have added another 2,500 jobs in Newport Beach, but those plans are being re-evaluated due to a slow-growth initiative approved by city voters in November. The biggest drop in jobs came at No. 21 Safeway Inc.,the Pleasanton-based parent company of Vons supermarkets. Safeway shed about 1,000 jobs, or 23%, due to the closure of Vons stores in Garden Grove, Laguna Beach and Dana Point. (The Laguna Beach store will be reopened as a Vons Pavillions next year.) No. 32 Advantica Restaurant Group Inc. posted a 21% decline after the sale of its El Pollo Loco chain. Other companies with double-digit drops were No. 12 Kroger Co., parent of the Ralphs supermarket chain, at 16%; Boeing and Verizon Wireless, at 12% each; and No. 19 Kaiser Permanente at 11% . Ralphs closed one store in Irvine earlier this year and shifted other employees as a result of its takeover by Kroger late last year. Verizon is shifting employees to its cellular phone division and plans to shed up to about 150 more OC jobs from its paging unit. Dropping from this year’s list were: Edwards Lifesciences Corp., Sears, Roebuck & Co., Kmart Corp., B. Braun Inc., Experian Inc., American Restaurant Group Inc., Prandium Inc., and AT & T; Corp. Kmart closed a store in Anaheim, while Experian transferred some jobs to other units outside OC. Both American Restaurant Group and Prandium sold portions of their holdings, thereby reducing their numbers. Retailers represented the biggest chunk of the list, with 13 companies among the largest 50 employers, followed by healthcare with eight and technology and telecommunications with seven. Other industries with multiple companies on the list were: tourism and hospitality and restaurants, with four each; and education and aerospace with two each. n Chris Cziborr, David Orloff and Vita Reed contributed to this article.
