Job Growth Will Slow in ‘99, Experts Predict
It was an exceptional and surprising year for analysts charting Ventura County’s economic course in 1998 as they watched area business blossom with the addition of nearly 10,000 new jobs.
But although they expect the trend in employment growth to continue, analysts predict that it will cool due to weakness in some overseas markets and a possible change in Sacramento’s business-friendly attitude.
“Given the momentum that Ventura County picked up through 1998, I think we can expect [the level of job growth] to continue at least through the first quarter of 1999,” said economist Mark Schniepp, director of the UC Santa Barbara Economic Forecast Project, which monitors the local economy. “But, given everything that’s going on today, what with our political uncertainty and weak foreign markets, job growth will slow.”
According to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., employment in Ventura County grew by 3.4% in 1998, with most new jobs being created in the manufacturing, service and retail trade industries.
In 1999, the Los Angeles EDC, which monitors each of the five Southern California county economies, predicts that job growth in the county will increase by only 2.9% as effects from Asia’s economic tumult and weakness in the South American markets begin to reverberate through the region’s economy.
Most of that growth, EDC analysts predict, will occur in high-technology firms, construction and service-related industries.
“For Ventura County, I don’t think things are going to be bad, just not as good as it’s been,” said EDC President Jack Kyser. “There’s going to be solid job growth, but it’s just not going to happen as fast as it did last year.”
Ventura County’s unemployment rate fell throughout 1998, ending last month at 5.2%--the lowest level for December since 1989.
Since emerging from the near-crippling recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s, California has spawned a robust and highly diversified economy that employs more than 15 million people and whose annual production eclipses Canada’s.
Recently, the five-county Southern California region has been leading the state’s economic growth, accounting for more than half of the state’s total labor force.
As part of that economic hegemony, Ventura County stands apart in ways that may keep it more buoyant in the face of stormy economic seas.
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The county’s less hectic lifestyle, quiet suburban neighborhoods, excellent schools, low crime rates and affordable housing, analysts said, are factors that will keep the area an attractive place for expanding businesses and those looking to relocate.
“We kind of think of it as the boutique county,” Kyser said. “It’s one of the few examples left of the classic California. . . . It’s small and has a tremendous amount of amenities that appeal to people wanting to move, which will play into the kind of employment growth that happens there in the future.”
Both Kyser and Schniepp expect employment to make significant gains through the first half of the year, but they say the growth will taper off as the nation’s economy begins to cool.
They added that residents are also waiting to see how or if Gov. Gray Davis changes the pro-business atmosphere that dominated Sacramento through Pete Wilson’s eight-year tenure.
Most growth will occur in technology production, which languished last summer amid a costly stock-selling frenzy, they predicted.
Large firms such as Vitesse Semiconductors and Imation, both of Camarillo, expect to increase their work forces this year.
Other sectors expected to grow are the service industry, retail trade and construction.
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According to a trend report prepared by the state’s Employment Development Department, jobs in the county are expected to increase by 16.6% between 1995 and 2003 with the addition of more than 39,000 positions.
Much of that growth, the report said, will occur in the service industry, wholesale and retail trade, transportation and public utilities.
Although the economy appears to hold less promise for the job market in 1999 than it provided the year before, experts agree that it will remain strong as county employers continue to expand and diversify their operations.
“I think [Ventura County] has a lot to look forward to in the future,” Schniepp said. “It ended 1998 with the strongest economy it’s had in years, and I think it’s going to continue like that until about the middle of the year.”
* BUSINESS BOOSTER: Rochelle Margolin joins Ventura’s Economic Development Division. B6
* MORE BUSINESS NEWS: B6-8
