UCI Totes Up Its Economic Worth to County

If you don’t toot your own horn, who will?

UC Irvine says it added about $1.23 billion to Orange County’s economy last year.

The university, with more than 17,000 students and almost 8,300 employees, has long been appreciated by the area’s computer and medical technology industries, which get a lot of support from university researchers and hire a lot of the school’s graduates.

But UCI wants everyone to know that it is more than just a pile of bricks and mortar sitting on a patch of prime property that otherwise could be occupied by $500,000 homes.

(The institution is no different in its desire for love and respect than other area colleges. Chapman University in Orange and Cal State Fullerton also have issued their own economic impact self-reports in recent years.)

In its latest missive, UCI says its payroll and purchases combined with direct spending by students, faculty and staff to pump $543 million into the county’s economy in 1997-98. The total swells to $1.23 billion when the magic multiplier effect is factored in.

The multiplier is a formula economists use to figure the impact of the dollars spent by one group as they spread through the economy. In UCI’s case, each dollar spent directly in the county grows by a factor of about 2.25 as its impact ripples on out, the university’s economic impact report says.

Direct spending last year included $377 million in wages and salaries; $38 million on employee and retiree health benefits and annuities; almost $55 million for supplies and services from Orange County-based businesses and $6 million to county-based general contractors for construction work at the campus.

UCI also figures that its students spent $110 million in the county last year.