IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

Byline: Annie Hundley

As I've written before, I am a member of the Valley Leadership Institute's '06-'07 class and each month we get together to learn about a big issue facing the San Fernando Valley.

In November, we had education day; in December, we learned about crime and justice. On Jan. 17, we plunked down at the Van Nuys Airport for an eight-hour primer on the Valley's economy.

I learned a ton! For example, did you know that the entertainment production work that takes place in the Valley represents 38 percent of the nation's production pie?

Here's a whole bunch of stuff you might not know:

The largest industry in the Valley is the entertainment industry (which includes Web sites, by the way) -- representing 108,000 jobs.

In the past 15 years, the manufacturing industry lost 43,000 jobs in the Valley. In that same period of time, the entertainment industry added 45,000 jobs. I wonder if there are aerospace engineers now working as engineers for a studio?

The Valley's average home price was $240,000 in 1991, dropped to $160,000 in 1997 (because of the Northridge Earthquake) and is now at the jaw-dropping high of $625,000 as of December 2006.

Of the 1.8 million people who live in the Valley, 195,000 commute over the hill for work.

The Valley has 70 percent of Los Angeles County's entertainment production, 65 percent of California's production and, as I said above, 38 percent of the nation's production.

Entertainment production creates $30 billion in economic output in 'Los Angeles County.

Feature film production in the county went down 7 percent last year. Many films are lured by tax incentives to film in other states, such as Louisiana and New Mexico. For each feature film that goes elsewhere to film, the county loses $70 million in economic output.

Shooting the average commercial creates 96 jobs. Shooting a one-hour drama creates 404 jobs and an average studio feature film creates 1,770 jobs. (High-paying jobs, mind you.)

The major motion picture studios lost $6.1 billion because of piracy just in 2005.

OK, my note-taking in the afternoon really tapered off as I went into information overload. But I did learn a lot of interesting stuff about the importance of diversity to business, the challenges of starting and maintaining small businesses in the community and how to ship teddy bears from 60 miles outside Shanghai to the Los Angeles port.

But I digress. I do know that the next time I go to a locally owned business or see something being filmed in the Valley, I'll have a much more informed perspective on how this Valley's economy works.