My last column focused on the contributions of a number of people who made the Business Journal’s list of OC’s Wealthiest. My basic point was that the products and services provided by the vision, creativity and sweat equity of those people far outweigh the wealth listed after their names.
When I wrote that column, I was vacationing in Europe. That really didn’t matter. The Business Journal’s new editor, Pete Weitzner, was able to email OC’s Wealthiest list to me and answer my questions. As for the information I needed for the article, the internet was at my beck and call. A game of internet chess against my brother Joel distracted me repeatedly from my writing. (Because of my stronger position, I eventually forced him to resign.) Finally, I emailed my draft article to Pete. He returned it to me with his edits. I then sent back the final column, after which I joined my traveling companions for a walk around some Italian town. While I don’t remember the details, I’m quite sure the town was charming, the food terrific, and the sunset over the Mediterranean incredibly beautiful.
My ability to get out a timely column in the midst of all this Italian divertimento e sole was made possible by the relentless advance of technology. That advance would not have happened were it not for some of OC’s Wealthiest, like Henry Samueli, Henry Nicholas, David Sun, John Tu, Fariborz Massech, Victor and Jamie Tsao, William Wang and Gary Jabara. Those visionaries have been at the vanguard leading the advance in technological change. The fact that a number of tech industry leaders not only live in Orange County but have their businesses here makes their contributions even more significant to us.
While our very own tech giants may be among OC’s Wealthiest, the jobs they’ve created dwarf their personal gains. It’s thanks to them that we’ve created a strong high-tech job sector in OC. Our research at Chapman has identified several high value-added job sectors that are helping to propel OC’s economic growth. All are related to advanced electronic, computer and medical technology.
The accompanying table shows a sampling of those high value-added job sectors. On a per-employee basis, the average annual pay of the workers represented in the table is almost $100,000—roughly double the countywide average. The fact that OC has a formidable critical mass of workers in those industries is revealed by the location quotients reported in the table. For example, a location quotient of 1.00 for employment means that the share of jobs in the county is equal to the national share for that industry sector. The employment quotient of 3.10 for Semiconductor and Electronic Component Manufacturing therefore suggests that OC’s share of employment in that sector is about three times greater than the national share. Notice the very high location quotient in the Medical Equipment and Supplies category, suggesting that OC’s share of jobs in that sector is roughly five times the national average.
Adding up the wealth for the nine members of OC’s Wealthiest mentioned above, I came up with a grand total of $18 billion—a lot of money to be sure, but a pittance compared to the products, services and jobs they have created in OC and around the world. That value they have created includes one more thing I haven’t touched on … yet.
Almost all of that $18 billion has been reinvested back into the economy. Much of it fuels even more growth in the companies they’ve created, as well as other companies, many of them startups. If it weren’t for that kind of reinvesting, very few of the people who made it on the list of OC’s Wealthiest would be there. All of them needed capital to drive their own visions, no matter what their industry. And it’s not just the people reinvesting their wealth back into the economy. There are also those whose financial genius moves a limited supply of investable funds to their highest end uses.
People rarely credit financial superstars for anything but their ability to make large profits. In fact, their superstar status is rooted not in their private vice but their public virtue. Those include the likes of others on the OC’s Wealthiest list—people like Bill Gross, Vinny Smith, Fred Taylor and Ed Thorp. If it weren’t for their genius in moving capital in more profitable directions, all the others on this year’s list would have had a tougher job getting the funds they needed to propel their business creation and growth.
I’ve always thought it might be a good idea for the Business Journal to rank OC’s Wealthiest by the number of jobs they’ve created rather than by their personal wealth. But that wouldn’t work for financial investors. How would you count the jobs Bill Gross created by moving money efficiently from one fund to another?
That’s why the Business Journal’s list of OC’s Wealthiest is a darn good proxy.
