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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Valley Still Integral Part of County Manufacturing

The San Fernando Valley was identified as the third largest concentration of manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles County in the latest study released by the county economic development corporation. With 76,300 jobs, the Valley lags behind the southeast area of the county and the South Bay, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.’s “Manufacturing in Southern California” study. The conclusion of the study released March 27 was that although the county lost 9,400 jobs it still was the nation’s top manufacturing center when compared with other large cities. The study was released to coincide with the Westec Manufacturing Technology Exposition and Conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. As one of the largest counties in the country in terms of size, it’s understandable that L.A. was found to be the top manufacturing center, said Dan Blake, director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge. The nature of manufacturing in the Valley is changing from that of line production to design and development of products, Blake said. In the garment industry, fashion design is picking up and where there used to be car manufacturers in the Valley a General Motors plant used to be located in Van Nuys now it is white collar designing positions, Blake said. “It’s not people bolting on the fender it’s the people designing the cars,” Blake added. The east Valley had 1,636 manufacturing establishments providing 44,700 jobs with a payroll of $513 million in the second quarter of 2006, according to the LAEDC study. The West Valley by comparison had 1,055 manufacturing establishments providing 31,600 jobs with a payroll of $452 million, the study said. Overall, the Valley lost 21,100 manufacturing jobs between 2001 and the second quarter of 2006, following the San Gabriel Valley and the county’s southeast area. As for specific job types, the county’s highest totals were in computer and electronic products (60,000 jobs), apparel (59,800 jobs) and transportation equipment (51,000 jobs). Apparel products, however, had the steepest drop in employee numbers between 2000 and 2006 with a loss of nearly 33,000 jobs or 35 percent. This was due to production moving overseas to Asia to keep costs down, the study said. In Ventura County, which includes Thousand Oaks and Camarillo, manufacturing job growth was driven by chemicals, which includes drugs. Jobs in that sector increased by 1,700 or 24 percent between 2000 and 2006, the study said. The largest number of jobs, 8,574, was at firms with over 1,000 employees, or what the study referred to as the “Amgen effect” after the large pharmaceutical company in Thousand Oaks.

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