Defense, Aerospace Work Provide 5% of County’s Jobs
A new study has determined that the defense and aerospace industries in Southern California aren’t dead. And in Orange County, they are far more entrenched--and important--than most people realize.
Defense and aerospace work still accounts for about 5% of the county’s permanent, full-time jobs. According to economists who study these things, each of those jobs creates work for 1.5 more people in the services and support industries.
Thus, some 150,000 of the county’s 1.26 million jobs, or about 12% of the total, owe their existence--directly or indirectly--to aerospace and defense.
Most of the places that employ these workers are easy to spot--factories, engineering firms, sprawling defense and aerospace installations such as Boeing Co.’s Seal Beach, Anaheim and Huntington Beach campuses.
But there’s one in the hills off of Ortega Highway that few people are aware of.
It’s TRW Inc.’s Capistrano Test Site, on 2,700 acres the giant aerospace and defense concern has leased for the past 35 years from the owners of Rancho Mission Viejo.
Over the years, everything from the first lunar module engine to laser defense systems has been tested at the facility, with little if any fanfare about its presence next to a working ranch where cattle still graze.
About 200 people work at the site, which was mentioned in a national news story recently when the Air Force announced that it had used the Orange County site to conduct the first series of tests of a laser designed to enable fighters and bombers to shoot down enemy missiles.
The system, first tested June 3, was built by a team that included Boeing, TRW Space and Electronics Group in Redondo Beach and Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space division, in Sunnyvale.
John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com.
