The county’s largest employers got smaller in the past year but still fared better than the overall job market here, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
The 51 largest employers here saw a 1.8% decline in local workers in the past 12 months, losing 3,839 people for a total of 210,363 employees.
The decline is less severe than the 3.5% yearly drop in overall employment in the county through October, according to the state Employment Development Department.
Countywide, 52,000 jobs were lost for the 12 months through October with an unemployment rate of 9.6%, up from 5.9% a year earlier.
Hiring by hospital operators, along with good showings at No. 4 Boeing Co. and No. 6 Target Corp., helped mitigate the decline for the top employers here.
At the same time, the worst segments of the local job market—construction and real estate, upscale and specialty retail, hotels and governments—are underrepresented, if at all, skewing the numbers slightly more positive.
The rate of job losses among the largest employers would have been higher if not for a big acquistion-related gain at No. 14 San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co.
It gained 1,521 local employees, a 52% jump, through its late 2008 acquisition of struggling Wachovia Corp. of North Carolina. It now has 4,455 local workers.
Wells Fargo’s absorption of Wachovia has been slower than that of other recent big bank consolidations, so more job cuts are likely.
No. 46 New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been faster to integrate failed savings and loan Washington Mutual Inc. and shed 147 workers, a 7.6% decline to 1,800 workers.
Corporations and hospital operators, some of them nonprofits, make up most of the list. It also includes universities in a bid to capture their economic impact. The list excludes other government employers.
Disney, UCI
Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. remained the county’s No. 1 employer at an estimated 19,800 jobs.
The figure for Disney is based on an average provided by the company of peak summer hiring and lower employment at other times. The Business Journal then subtracted 200 jobs to reflect layoffs that played out at Disney’s Anaheim operations earlier this year.
No. 2 University of California, Irvine, narrowed Disney’s lead—but not because of hiring.
UC Irvine provided a better accounting of its employment this year, bringing it within about 500 jobs of Disney.
As with Disney’s figure, UCI’s entry is a Business Journal estimate based on input from the school and an allowance for recent layoffs.
UCI is estimated at 19,279 workers on campus and at its hospital in Orange. That reflects 60 or so layoffs amid the state’s budget crisis with more expected.
Based on a better accounting from UCI, the Business Journal revised last year’s employment for the school to about 19,340 people, versus last year’s low estimate of 17,500.
Our figure for UCI excludes 1,543 “without salary” employees who are paid by grants or work on a volunteer basis with the school.
Those workers, who the federal government doesn’t count on UCI’s payroll, actually would put the school ahead of Disney.
Another university, No. 12 California State University, Fullerton, saw a more dramatic 14% decline in jobs with 816 positions lost.
Like UCI, Cal State Fullerton is dealing with budget cuts from Sacramento. But, unlike UCI, which has a number of grants and donations, Cal State Fullerton gets more of its funding from the state.
Some of the hiring that took place on the list occurred at hospitals.
No. 3 Orange-based St. Joseph Health System added 273 jobs, a 2.6% gain to 10,929 employees, with its acquisition earlier this year of Laguna Beach’s South Coast Medical Center, now Mission Hospital Laguna Beach.
The acquisition helped offset 159 job cuts in September at St. Joseph’s three other local hospitals.
No. 8 Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente moved up two spots on the list after adding 102 workers, a 1.9% increase to 5,598 employees here.
The gain was part of ongoing hiring at Kaiser’s Irvine hospital that opened last year.
Another hospital operator, No. 9 Memorial Health Services Inc. of Fountain Valley, added 224 people for a 4.2% increase to 5,533 jobs.
Earlier this year, Memorial’s Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley added a $50 million, 162,000-square-foot building for outpatient procedures.
No. 16 Newport Beach-based Hoag Memorial Healthcare Presbyterian added 125 people for a 3% increase to 4,241 jobs.
Add in No. 35 Orange-based Children’s Hospital of Orange County’s 31 worker increase for a total of 2,199 employees—as well as employee losses at hospital operators No. 20 Tenet Healthcare Corp. and No. 26 Integrated Healthcare Holdings Inc.—and hospitals on the list gained about 380 jobs.
Boeing
That’s about the employee increase seen at Boeing, which saw its employee count rise by 377 to 8,477 workers, a 4.7% jump.
The Chicago-based defense contractor, which often fluctuates on hiring because of projects, created the most jobs on the list.
Lately, it has been aligning its local defense operations in a bid to be the leading supplier of electronic warfare gear.
Grocers, discount stores and other retailers saw a mix of gains and losses.
Minneapolis-based Target Corp., the largest retailer on the list, added 126 workers for a 2.1% rise to 6,226 jobs. The gain came from stores opened in the past year.
No. 17 Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is estimated flat at 4,000 local workers.
No. 22 Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS Caremark Corp. shed 270 jobs, down 6.9% to 3,650 workers.
The job losses came with the closure of some stores with CVS’ buy last year of Longs Drug Stores Corp.
Upscale retailers No. 27 Nordstrom Inc. of Seattle and No. 33 Macy’s Inc. of Cincinnati both are estimated to have seen local job losses in the past year as some shoppers bypassed them for discount retailers.
No. 11 Atlanta-based Home Depot Inc. shed 450 jobs, an 8.3% drop to 5,000 local employees, due to customer cut backs on home remodeling and the closing of its Expo Design Center unit.
