It’s Been Some Job to Fill the Job of Keeping Track of County’s Jobs

When it comes to job creation, Orange County has posted an enviable track record, with an average of 35,000 jobs added each year for the past decade.

And the county also boasts one of the lowest jobless rates in California, with an average of only 3% unemployment over the past two years.

So it was something of an embarrassment that the state Employment Development Department--the government agency responsible for finding jobs for the jobless--was seemingly unable to fill the vacant position of labor market analyst for Orange County.

The position was vacated when analyst Daniel Johnson transferred to Sacramento in January. The EDD promised that someone would soon be named to replace Johnson as one of only two “outstationed” county labor analysts in the state. San Diego has the other one, while all other counties are served by analysts stationed at the three main EDD offices in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

But when no appointment was forthcoming, rumors circulated that the cost of living in Orange County (the cost of housing, to be specific) was too high to tempt any existing analysts into asking for a transfer.

Finally, after a hiatus of seven months, the position has been filled, sort of.

Michael Caplis, head of the EDD office in Los Angeles, said Eleanor Jordan, a 20-year EDD employee who most recently was a section supervisor in the department’s Lakewood field office, has been named Orange County labor market analyst.

She starts “within a week or so,” Caplis said.

But it will be three months or so before she officially takes up residence in the labor market analyst’s cubbyhole at the EDD’s Santa Ana office.

Jordan will be assigned to Los Angeles at first, while she “learns the ropes of economic analysis,” Caplis said. In the interim, she will make occasional field trips to Orange County to get familiar with the local job scene. Jordan already lives in Orange County.

And, said Caplis, there was no truth in the reports that nobody else wanted the Orange County job because it costs too much to move here.

It took seven months to fill the post, he said, because Johnson’s position was transferred to Sacramento with him.

Jordan had been promised the Orange County analyst’s spot some time ago, Caplis said, but it wasn’t until recently that the EDD was able to get the position of labor market analyst budgeted for Orange County.