What jobs are in OC?

O

OC_Boston_Bay_IHB

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The central theme of unaffordability is a direct function of the jobs that exist in OC (or even L.A.) Why does the Bay area (San Jose up to Marin) have 2x the average weekly income, per 2006 BLS stats? Could be that all the high paying jobs are there. For some emprirical data, let's examine the list of F500 companies in CA:

1 Chevron 4 200,567.0 San Ramon

2 Hewlett-Packard 14 91,658.0 Palo Alto

3 McKesson 18 88,050.0 San Francisco

4 Wells Fargo 41 47,979.0 San Francisco

5 Safeway 56 40,185.0 Pleasanton

6 Intel 62 35,382.0 Santa Clara

7 Walt Disney 64 34,285.0 Burbank

8 Ingram Micro 70 31,357.5 Santa Ana

9 Northrop Grumman 73 30,304.0 Los Angeles

10 Cisco Systems 77 28,484.0 San Jose

11 Countrywide Financial 91 24,444.6 Calabasas

12 Apple 121 19,315.0 Cupertino

13 Occidental Petroleum 124 19,029.0 Los Angeles

14 Gap 144 15,943.0 San Francisco

15 DIRECTV Group 160 14,755.5 El Segundo

16 Computer Sciences 163 14,623.6 El Segundo

17 Oracle 167 14,380.0 Redwood City

18 Amgen 171 14,268.0 Thousand Oaks

19 Sun Microsystems 187 13,068.0 Santa Clara

20 Health Net 189 12,908.4 Woodland Hills

21 Edison International 192 12,622.0 Rosemead

22 PG&E Corp. 196 12,539.0 San Francisco

23 Sempra Energy 210 11,850.0 San Diego

24 KB Home 228 11,003.8 Los Angeles

25 Sanmina-SCI 230 10,955.4 San Jose

26 Google 241 10,604.9 Mountain View

27 Solectron 243 10,560.7 Milpitas

28 Applied Materials 274 9,167.0 Santa Clara

29 First American Corp. 289 8,499.1 Santa Ana

30 Hilton Hotels 296 8,162.0 Beverly Hills

31 Science Applications Intl. 298 8,127.0 San Diego

32 Qualcomm 317 7,526.0 San Diego

33 Jacobs Engineering Grp. 322 7,421.3 Pasadena

34 Calpine 344 6,705.8 San Jose

35 Yahoo 357 6,425.7 Sunnyvale

36 Synnex 360 6,343.5 Fremont

37 Dole Food 367 6,219.3 Westlake Village

38 eBay 383 5,969.7 San Jose

39 Agilent Technologies 387 5,891.0 Santa Clara

40 Charles Schwab 389 5,880.0 San Francisco

41 Reliance Steel & Alum. 402 5,748.4 Los Angeles

42 Mattel 406 5,650.2 El Segundo

43 Advanced Micro Devices 407 5,649.0 Sunnyvale

44 Avery Dennison 412 5,583.1 Pasadena

45 Ross Stores 415 5,570.2 Pleasanton

46 Pacific Life 437 5,201.9 Newport Beach

47 Longs Drug Stores 443 5,097.1 Walnut Creek

48 Franklin Resources 445 5,050.7 San Mateo

49 DaVita 458 4,880.7 El Segundo

50 Ryland Group 467 4,757.2 Calabasas

51 Clorox 475 4,660.0 Oakland

52 Western Digital 498 4,341.3 Lake Forest

53 Con-way 504 4,243.2 San Mateo

54 URS 505 4,240.1 San Francisco

55 Levi Strauss 510 4,192.9 San Francisco

56 Symantec 515 4,143.4 Cupertino

57 CB Richard Ellis Group 520 4,032.0 El Segundo

58 Robert Half Intl. 524 4,013.5 Menlo Park

59 Core-Mark Holding 527 4,001.1 South San Francisco

60 Gateway 529 3,980.8 Irvine

61 Standard Pacific 533 3,964.0 Irvine

62 Williams-Sonoma 554 3,727.5 San Francisco

63 Live Nation 557 3,691.6 Beverly Hills

64 Broadcom 560 3,667.8 Irvine

65 Stater Bros. Holdings 574 3,508.8 Colton

66 Del Monte Foods 604 3,308.6 San Francisco

67 SanDisk 610 3,257.5 Milpitas

68 Building Materials Holding 613 3,245.2 San Francisco

69 Mercury General 622 3,168.7 Los Angeles

70 Nvidia 640 3,068.8 Santa Clara

71 Allergan 644 3,063.3 Irvine

72 Gilead Sciences 649 3,026.1 Foster City

73 Granite Construction 654 2,969.6 Watsonville

74 Unified Western Grocers 657 2,953.8 Commerce

75 Electronic Arts 658 2,951.0 Redwood City

76 Jack in the Box 685 2,765.6 San Diego

77 ABM Industries 694 2,712.7 San Francisco

78 Indymac Bancorp 722 2,591.0 Pasadena

79 Spansion 725 2,579.3 Sunnyvale

80 Adobe Systems 727 2,575.3 San Jose

81 Beckman Coulter 735 2,528.5 Fullerton

82 Fleetwood Enterprises 736 2,526.0 Riverside

83 Intuit 776 2,362.5 Mountain View

84 Quiksilver 777 2,362.3 Huntington Beach

85 Juniper Networks 787 2,303.6 Sunnyvale

86 Univision Communications 812 2,166.7 Los Angeles

87 National Semiconductor 817 2,158.1 Santa Clara

88 McClatchy 830 2,098.2 Sacramento

89 KLA-Tencor 837 2,070.6 San Jose

90 Network Appliance 838 2,066.5 Sunnyvale

91 Guitar Center 851 2,030.0 Westlake Village

92 Molina Healthcare 858 2,005.0 Long Beach

93 LSI 864 1,982.1 Milpitas

94 Watson Pharmaceuticals 865 1,979.2 Corona

95 Pacer International 890 1,887.8 Concord

96 Maxim Integrated Products 899 1,858.9 Sunnyvale

97 Xilinx 942 1,726.2 San Jose

98 Novellus Systems 960 1,658.5 San Jose

99 Lam Research 967 1,642.2 Fremont

100 Central Garden & Pet 977 1,621.5 Walnut Creek

101 Varian Medical Systems 985 1,597.8 Palo Alto

102 Viewsonic 990 1,589.1 Walnut

103 CKE Restaurants 991 1,588.4 Carpinteria

104 Palm 997 1,578.5 Sunnyvale



What is in OC? RE and Title Insurance, with Disney, Broadcom and Western Digital thrown in. Is it shocking to anyone that the majority of this list is in the Bay area? Now, for every one of those F500 tech companies (or even Chevron or McKesson) you have thousands of 6 figure jobs in things like program mgt, sales, marketing, engineering, biz dev, etc. Multiply the number of companeis by these job categories, and it is no wonder why the pay is so much higher in the Bay. Now RE is higher too, but OC was doing a pretty good job of keeping pace in the days of EZ Money. Today, one can find numerous properties in OC in the $600K range (especially in South OC). Nothing under $900K for crappy 50 yr old 1200 sq ft stucco boxes in any decent Bay area town. The mantra up here is that the bubble is strictly a SoCal phenomenon (as everyone up here views SoCal as the more attractive poorer cousin of the Bay area). Even with avg houehold income of $212K in the town I live in, the median SFR price in >$1M. So it will come down too, but I wonder how far given the higher incomes up here.



In my experience, there are 3 metro markets in the US where anyone degreed and skilled can make big $$: Metro NYC, Boston, San Jose/SF. OC is an employment backwater (albeit with great weather, beaches and eye candy). The highest paying jobs in OC were in RE (for the most part - I am sure there are examples of highly compensated individuals in branch offices of major outfits or small business owners). Did you know that not a single Wall St investment bank has an office in LA or OC? They all have outposts up here, usually 2 (one if SF, one in Palo Alto). We even have San Jose and Palo Alto vying for the title of high tech capital of the world.



I miss the weather and beaches, but knowing what I know now, I wished I had moved to Silicon Valley in my early 20s. If you want to live in CA, this is where the jobs, opportunity and $$$ are.



Opposing views? Does anyone think OC has enough high paying jobs to justify current housing prices in a normal underwriting environment?
 
How about large law firms' satellite offices in Irvine paying 160K starting salary? what about all the doctors and dentists?

anyway, I don't think that high-paying jobs really determine the home prices, since there are thousands of people in the OC (old money & new money made on the stock market before it crashed and from the real estate boom, as well as other sources like internet business) who don't have to work to make a living (just drive down to CDM or Laguna Beach or Laguna Niguel during weekdays and look at the traffic of luxury cars, you would be surprised :)
 
my 2 cent.... I use to live in San Jose back in the eighties and early 90's and now i live here in OC. Hands down OC is better all around. As for jobs and housing it is all relative, yes you make more up in the bay area and you pay more for your house, food, gas, toothpaste... etc. So all in all it is a wash. The good thing about the OC economy is that it has a good mix and it is tough to bring down. Everyone thought OC was done when we lost our Aerospace gig but guess what, something always pops up. Remember the tech bubble back in the 2000? my parents and friends and relatives had it hard up in the bay area. they were all hurting.... but eventually it all came back but not like before. Also.... i am hearing now that seattle is the next hot spot with all the tech and brain power heading up there, so this could really hurt SJ/SF.
 
B to B -- Do you know garfangle?



The accounting firm I work for exiled us to Silicon Valley in 2001. We lived in Santa Clara. We were finally able to engineer our escape back to SoCal in 2005. While it was a decent place, the most appropriate term I can come up with to describe those 4 years is BORING. There is nothing to do in the South Bay, particularly if you are a family person. And then there is SF. Everyone was so in love with SF, but I don't see the draw. Once you do the tourist traps you are left with expensive resturants designed for people who think they are on an episode of Sex in the City and who enjoy stepping in bum piss. And the weather sucks. Rain and 55 degrees from December to April gets old. Yeah, the average salaries might be higher, but not high enough to keep us there. OC and LA is a far more family friendly environment, IMHO.



BTW - Since you are her neighbor, could you ask Nancy Pelosi if she is planning on doing anything?
 
<em>"just drive down to CDM or Laguna Beach or Laguna Niguel during weekdays and look at the traffic of luxury cars, you would be surprised :)"


</em>


The only thing that really surprises me is the number of people pretending to be rich in OC.


<em>


"I don't think that high-paying jobs really determine the home prices"</em>





The idle rich do not establish the prices for housing other than the very high end. The remining 99% of house prices are determined by incomes and the availability of financing. Since incomes were not rising much, it was the availability of easy financing that inflated the bubble, and its elimination will be largely responsible for the crash.
 
while I do agree that availability of financing inflates the house price, but how does one "pretend" to be rich if they drive a 70K + car and buy over 1 mil homes?

Of course you would say that they live with their parents and lease luxury cars or that they bought that home when it was worth 200K. while that is true in some cases, I personally know several people who never had to work a day in their life b/c they have nice trust funds/other income, or talk about the housewives and families with 3-5 children living in nice neighborhoods with only the father working? I just don't get it, how can you afford to have so many children, a nice house, and luxury cars on 1 salary in the OC?
 
<em>"but how does one "pretend" to be rich if they drive a 70K + car and buy over 1 mil homes?"</em>





The buy the house with 100% financing on a teaser rate and lease the car making the payments from their HELOC.
 
OC has law firms, but not offices with hundreds of associates and partners. And not most of the blue-chip firms servicing the capital markets clients on Wall St. How many highly paid drs and dentists are there? Most recent licensees likely make <$150K.



Cisco alone has 18,000 people in San Jose. Is there any single employer in OC that provides that many high paying jobs?



As far as wealth, roll up the Peninsula via 280 towards SF and look at the places in the hills of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside, Los Altos,Belmont, Burlingame etc. OC lacks that sort of wealth. Google alone injected $19 billion into the local economy over the last 4 yrs (per the SJ Merc news). The key to why people put up with the high costs, traffic, boring-compared-to-OC life is the chance to hit it big - and many, many do just that. This is the only place outside Wall St where a multi-billion $ industry exists around monetizing ideas.



Regarding the job losses in the tech bubble, NO ONE I know or work with lost their job. There were many unskilled folks who landed good jobs (gee, kind of like RE) but they were cleaned out. My company is still trying to cut the minions of slackers we picked up through reckless hiring and acquisitions over the past decade. Silicon Valley is totally Darwinian - the weak and incapable eventually get crushed.



This area bleeds 6 figure jobs, but RE is starting to get crushed just the same. If anything the Bay area is rife with the "It's different here" syndrome that is prevalent in OC, but instead of weather and beaches the premium up here is attributed to jobs. It's an interesting dichotomy. It makes me wonder how bad things could get in OC.
 
blackacre-seeker - we were very surprised by how many million-dollar homes were decorated inside like pure shit in irvine! we could only guess that the "homeowners" were mortgaging the farm to buy as big a house as they could, leaving themselves no money and forced to use plastic folding chairs as dining room furniture! heh heh!!! don't get me wrong, i grew up very poor, and believe everyone should live within their means...but come on, if you can't afford it, just don't buy it!?!
 
When I first came to OC from the UK a Colleague told me "You pay for the climate, the Houses are free" and coming from the UK Weather (we don't have a climate) I believed it!



I must be honest, every time I get on the Freeway during rush hour, which is very rare these Days, I always wonder "Where the hell to all these People work, what do they do" ?
 
I'm a bay area native. Now pursuing my acting career in so cal... just kidding.



I prefer the bay area culture, as opposed to the so cal:

Bay area is laid back - people go out in public in sweat pants / pajamas.. so cal people are dressier and flashier.

So cal culture is about driving, driving, driving... some of the roads are widen to enhance the driving experience. I did get a good deal on my car in the OC, that I would not have been able to in the bay area.

I noticed there are more new cars on the road here than up there.

Things just seems superficial overall.. possibly because of Hollywood and LA - oversized sunglasses, starbucks drink in one hand, small pet dogs..



I did live in Seattle for 7 months.. first out of state experience

People are nice and courteous, both in person and on the road (well, if they don't know that your from Cali)

Lots of recent college new hires relocated there - they can afford to rent a place alone!

No one uses or carries umbrellas
 
<em>"just drive down to CDM or Laguna Beach or Laguna Niguel during weekdays and look at the traffic of luxury cars, you would be surprised :)"


</em>


<em> The only thing that really surprises me is the number of people pretending to be rich in OC.





</em>You mean like this guy?





<img src="http://www.ocregister.com/newsimages/money/2007/05/20sadek1_md.jpg" alt="" />
 
Boston2theBay said : The mantra up here is that the bubble is strictly a SoCal phenomenon (as everyone up here views SoCal as the more attractive poorer cousin of the Bay area).





It must be part of the sophisticated culture you come from, but down here in SoCal, we aren't attracted to our cousins.
 
Just just remembered that the dates of "The OC" the Fox TV show, August 5, 2003, to February 22, 2007, conicided exactly with the RE bubble. And guess what, the jobs that financed the Nicols and Cohens lavish lifestyle revolved around real estate in the form the the Newport Group, though Cabel Nicol died bankrupt at the end of season 2.
 
There are a lot of automotive companies in Orange County (this is only a partial list...)



1. Ford Western Region

2. PAG (Jag/Land Rover/Volvo) Western Region

3. Chrysler Western Region

4. Toyota Western Region

5. Mazda North American HQ

6. Kia North American HQ

7. Hyundai North American HQ

8. Suzuki North American HQ

9. Mitsubishi North American HQ

10. Mercedes Benz Western Region



Most of these companies have been here for decades...design and R&D centers for most automotive companies are either in LA or OC also.



-OCR
 
i saw a list of the top county employers not too long ago. the largest employer in oc is disney, followed by (but not sure if the order is exactly correct): the county, uci, cke (carls jr corporate), boeing, ingram micro . healthcare providers kaiser, tenet, and st josephs are also amongst the the top ten if i recall correctly.
 
Maybe it is because I am in the software field, but I notice a lot of tech companies in OC, especially in Irvine. They may not be big, or may not be HQ'd here, but there are a lot of them -- companies like Blizzard and Google.
 
Top employers in OC (from the OC Business Journal):





1. Disney


2. UCI


3. St. Joseph Health System


4. Boeing


5. Yum Brands


6. AT&T


7. CSUF


8. Home Depot


9. Bank of America


10. Memorial Health Services
 
<p>I realized years ago that OC does not have much of a corporate presence. It doesn't have corporate headquarters in towering highrises like New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. But there is definitely wealth here! It lies in the hands of the entrepreneurs, private professionals, and small business owners. There's Donald Bren with the Irvine Company. There's the owners of Kingston Technology in Fountain Valley. There's the owner of Asian Garden Mall in Westminster. There are tons of doctors, plastic surgeons, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, etc.</p>

<p>It's true that if you want to climb the corporate ladder, you should move somewhere else. But other than that, there are so may oppurtunities here! In my opinion, business owners are wealthier than corporate officers anyhow. Don't forget that the owners of Wahoo's Tacos orginated from the OC too.</p>
 
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