Moving in High Gear, Thanks to High Tech
Even in Los Angeles, they are celebrating Orange County’s status these days as an important high-tech employment center and location for job growth.
A recent report by the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County surveyed emerging high-tech companies, excluding those with more than 1,000 workers. After the dreary news of the recession of recent years and the attendant negative publicity arising from the bankruptcy, the findings offer an important economic sign of the times and cause for long-term optimism. With good news also comes a challenge: how to manage the golden egg.
Largely because of the success of the Irvine Spectrum and UC Irvine, Irvine was found to be the leading high-tech employment center in Southern California by a considerable margin. It also was expected to post the greatest job gains over the next year.
Irvine is not alone in faring well. Anaheim, known largely for the cachet of Disneyland and for the sports franchises that have made it an entertainment capital, came in No. 5 in Southern California with 8,118 jobs. A casual drive in the environs of State College Boulevard reveals a high-tech landscape, supplementing the city’s better known economic engines.
Costa Mesa and Tustin also fared well, weighing in at No. 6 and No. 8 respectively.
Together, these clusters of emerging high-tech companies augur well for the area as a place to provide new economic ventures and opportunities. Indeed, all of Southern California seems to fare well in the mix.
Irvine has built its nest egg largely with computer hardware, accounting for about 5,000 of the 23,720 jobs that the city was found to harbor. It is home to some of the region’s largest high-tech companies.
The range of new technologies in the county covered such other industries as software, medical devices, telecommunications and defense. One of the assets of Southern California cited by experts is that it has a diversity of high-tech industries.
All of this is heartening in view of the procession of traumas of the 1990s, including earthquakes, fire, flood and the local economic disaster of the bankruptcy. It is important to remember that quality of life is an issue for attracting and retaining businesses and talented workers.
The local jobless rate has been considerably lower this year than last, and the area has created thousands of new jobs. Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto, recently described Orange County as “the high-tech, information-age center of Southern California; it’s the engine for the state.”
All in all, this is good news. However, in its optimism, the county must be careful that it identifies what it does best, and does not try to be what it is not. Other parts of California have their own powerful economic niches, for example, in the computer industry powerhouses of the San Jose area and in the entertainment technologies of Los Angeles. For Orange County, the relationship with emerging markets in the Pacific Rim is of particular importance.
The latest findings reveal that Orange County is on a good track as it looks forward. It will be important in formulating any plans to coordinate strategy to identify and foster those industries mentioned previously where the county has an advantage or even dominance.
The county has a lifestyle and education system that are the envy of other locations in the state that may have different kinds of economic concentration. As it grows, the area can be a powerful economic center--and a wonderful place to live and work--by identifying and sticking to the things it does well.
