COUNTY'S JOB GROWTH FOR 1996 TRAILED STATE : NORTHERN CALIFORNIA LEAD IN EMPLOYMENT, STUDY SAYS.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

Los Angeles County's economy created far fewer jobs last year than originally estimated, while Northern California's growth rate bettered expectations, UCLA economists concluded in a report released today.

The overall outlook for California remains upbeat, with job growth pegged at 2.7 percent this year and then 2 percent the next two years, not much different from the last quarterly assessment by the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

But what's different is that new winners and losers emerged last year thanks to some recent number crunching. The process, called ``benchmarking,'' is done once a year and calculates job growth from a much broader selection of businesses than are included in the monthly unemployment surveys.

UCLA economists, in analyzing the updated numbers from the state, found that job growth to the north is much more robust than anyone imagined.

For example, Santa Clara County, which is rich with the Silicon Valley's high-tech firms, was thought to have had a 4 percent growth rate last year. But that growth is now estimated to be at 5.7 percent.

And in the San Francisco area, the job growth rate was 3.8 percent last year; that's considerably more than the 1 percent previously believed.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles County, the job growth rate was revised down from 1.7 percent to 0.7 percent. It happened in part because there were thousands fewer jobs created than originally estimated in sectors like wholesale and retail trade and construction.

The news is not rattling economists, however, who say the state's prospects are still bright, especially in Southern California. Job growth in the five-county region came in at 2 percent, down slightly from the previous estimate of 2.3 percent.

``The distinction I would make is we are not a poorer relation to Northern California but that the entire state overall is doing very well,'' said Tom K. Lieser, associate director of UCLA's Business Forecasting Project. ``Southern California has a higher unemployment rate, but we're growing about as fast as the nation's labor market. And Northern California is experiencing something akin to a boom situation.''

Last year, Los Angeles actually gained 10,300 manufacturing jobs in a variety of industries, including the high-paying positions at companies that make electrical and transportation equipment.

Motion picture employment was also revised upward by 2,400 jobs.

Ted Gibson, chief economist for the California Department of Finance, already sees signs this year that Los Angeles is building economic muscle.

Last month, the county added 2.5 percent more jobs than during February 1996, including a whopping 20.7 percent increase in motion picture production.

``Los Angeles is coming back,'' Gibson said. ``From here you would have to encounter a pretty good slowdown to get below a 3 percent growth rate.''

Both Gibson and Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County, said the county's job bank is better than what the survey concluded because it has a ``blind spot'' that misses small or start-up firms.

``One thing that comes through loud and clear is that Santa Clara County has much bigger firms that would be captured by the survey,'' Kyser said. ``In Los Angeles we may have more people working on computer programming but they are at small firms so a lot of them would not be captured.''

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Map/Chart/Box: (Color) CALIFORNIA

California's job growth in 1996 was led by San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Thestate overall growth rate was dragged down by Los Angeles County's negligible increase.