Housing Jobs Expected to Aid Economy : Recession: Economist says that by next year, employers will add 15,000 full- and part-time positions to county payrolls.
The long-suffering residential development industry will lead Orange County out of recession late this year as increased demand for housing spurs building activity and new jobs, according to a major regional consulting firm.
The growth won’t show up in 1994 figures, said Walter Hahn, a Newport Beach economist who is director of real estate consulting for Kenneth Leventhal & Co.’s Orange County operations. But by next year employers, led by building-related businesses, will add 15,000 full- and part-time jobs to their payrolls, Hahn predicts.
His annual forecast, which he compiles for local development industry clients like William Lyon Co. and the Irvine Co., generally agrees with earlier 1994 prognostications by economists at Cal State Fullerton and Chapman University. But Hahn is more enthusiastic about job growth than Chapman’s Center for Economic Research, which said in December that it expects Orange County employers to add 85,300 jobs to their payrolls by the end of 1998.
Hahn said he thinks the economic recovery here will be even more robust and suggested that local employment could grow by 130,000 jobs during the same period.
Hahn sees the county’s job situation remaining static this year--which he interprets as good news because it follows several years of substantial losses. Orange County employers slashed 70,400 jobs from their payrolls between June, 1990, the month before the recession officially began, and the end of 1993.
Hahn calls 1994 a “turning point” for Orange County, a year in which the groundwork will be laid for employment and other economic gains through the rest of the decade.
Like other regional economists, he doesn’t expect the county’s economy to be upset by the earthquake that rocked Ventura and Los Angeles counties last month, though he does expect it to add to Los Angeles County’s economic woes and to help keep L.A.’s economy in recession through much of 1995.
But in Orange County, he said, home sales have been picking up in recent months, the gains generated by relatively low prices, low interest rates and pent-up buyer demand after nearly four years of poor sales activity.
Because home construction is one of the most powerful drivers of the county’s economy--creating not only construction jobs but employment and spending in other segments of the economy such as engineering services, building materials, even carpet, drapery and home furnishing retailers--Hahn said he expects his predicted 15% building increase “to be a major force in improving the county’s economy.”
Beyond the 1994 level of 7,000 new homes and apartments, Hahn predicts that housing demand will support construction in the range of 15,000 to 18,000 new units a year from 1996 through 1998--when, he said, a new national recession will start damping down the economy.
