A few events in the past few weeks illustrate very clearly some problems with our area economy. Although one of the events is very positive, it highlights these problems sharply. I don’t want to make this column entirely negative, so I’ll offer some positive solutions. The purely positive event was the big job fair Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park held to fill more than 300 open positions primarily at its Canoga Park and Chatsworth facilities but also for some jobs at the Alabama and Florida locations of the aerospace manufacturer. The jobs are both engineering and non-technical positions and are part of the biggest hiring spree the company has had in a decade. The open positions are partly in response to two NASA contracts Pratt & Whitney has won in recent weeks. In July, the company received a $1.2 billion contract to design, develop and test a J-2 engine to power the upper stages of the Ares I and Ares V rockets. In August, the company signed a $975 million contract extension to continue maintaining the space shuttle main engines through 2010. These open positions are great news because there’s not always good news coming out of the manufacturing sector locally. It’s expansion, not contraction. Now to the not-so-good news. As has been reported extensively, local behemoths Amgen and Countrywide have had some severe troubles lately. Amgen has announced more than 2,000 layoffs with Countrywide announcing 500 (although the company says none of these layoffs will be local as of yet.) Many of the Amgen jobs pay six figures, Countrywide less so, but this has been a stable company and huge area employer that was hit hard by the mortgage crisis of late. So the Pratt & Whitney job fair and Amgen and Countrywide point out that we’ve got a high-powered employment base in some industries here. But now let’s throw a small study by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy and The Partnership for Working Families into the mix. Based on census data, this study released last week points out that despite small gains in income in 2006, L.A. County’s economy is still full of workers who don’t make much money at all because they’re largely in service and other low-paying professions. The report shows that close to one-third of full-time workers earn less than $25,000 a year. We need more Rocketdynes, Amgens and Countrywides. Yes, they hit some rough spots occasionally but overall they are strong employers offering good jobs. The solution: Incentives to get such companies to locate or expand here. This means a better business climate that isn’t so expensive to do business in. And more importantly, we need to sustain a well-educated workforce that can hold these higher-paying positions and not have to resort to service jobs. This is where our educational institutions as well as our businesses come in. In this issue, Staff Reporter Nadra Kareem has written an article (page 6) about a high school program that gets students involved on focused career tracks that can provide a reliable employer base for local businesses. We need more of those programs. Business Journal Editor Jason Schaff can be reached at (818) 316-3125 or at [email protected].
