Tops California Job Growth List
By
Steve Pastis
The Visalia-Porterville metropolitan area ranks No. 1 on the new Forbes.com list for job growth among all small cities in California. The area also ranks second overall among all cities in the state on job growth lists, which were compiled by economists Joel Kotkin and Michael Shires, Ph.D.
“What it means is that job growth in our region has been stronger than just about everyone else's in California, except Bakersfield,” said Jim Claybaugh, executive director of the Visalia Economic Development Corporation (VEDC). “Basically, our job creation has been strong in comparison to other cities in California.”
Claybaugh explained that Visalia has maintained a good balance between job gains and losses in the current economy, which has had an impact on the study. “In the past, they considered 'high growth' 3 to 5 percent in most years,” he said. “For last year, anything above 1 percent was considered very, very strong.” He added that the local area is better able to hold onto jobs than other cities.
“There are certainly a lot of locally owned businesses in town and more than the average number of locally owned manufacturers in town, and that certainly adds to our ability to hold onto jobs,” he said, adding that businesses work to hold on to their full-time employees “when the owner of a company lives in the same town as the employees do.”
Claybaugh said that the area's high ranking is a result of the VEDC, the Visalia Chamber of Commerce and the city working together with schools and the College of the Sequoias. “We really try to improve the business climate as much as we can,” he said. “We have a manufacturing sector in Visalia which gets overlooked, but it's a source of a lot of jobs in our local economy.”
“Every job created in the industrial park creates two jobs,” said Visalia City Manager Steve Salomon, adding that the jobs could be teachers, retail store positions, real estate agents or medical jobs created through city's partnership with Kaweah Delta Health Care District. “It takes awhile for all that to drift through the economy.”
The Visalia-Porterville MSA, which basically incorporates all of Tulare County, was near the top of last year's list and Claybaugh “definitely thinks” that the Visalia-Porterville area will maintain its high ranking next year. He cited the industrial sector and the city of Visalia's efforts to create the industrial park that contributes to the area's economic diversity. “When you go through recession periods, the more diverse your economy is, the better able you are to get through it.”
“One of the most critical things is to work on diversification,” agreed Bob Nance, economic and redevelopment director for the city of Tulare. “In the Central Valley, ag is king, but we have diversified into distribution and manufacturing. We don't get to have the extreme highs, but then again we don't get the extreme lows.”
Forbes.com annually ranks all major metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) in the country to measure short and long-term growth. Overall, California cities did not fare well in the study. Although it was the best small city area for job growth in the state, the Visalia-Porterville MSA ranked 75th nationally in that category.
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