Jobs up 2.5% in L.A. County.

The first, concrete numbers on the elusive Southland economic recovery were released last week by the state, which reported that employment in Los Angeles County in January increased by 2.5 percent from a year earlier.

There were 3.77 million jobs at private- and public-sector establishments in the county in January, up from 3.68 million 12 months earlier, according to the state Employment Development Department.

The welcome job growth amplifies a reverse of a near six-year-long tide of declining job rolls in the county, a tide which steadied in 1995 and now appears headed out.

"Defense spending - the purchase of defense goods - international trade and construction are all positive," said Esmael Adibi, director for the Center of Economic Research at Chapman University in Orange County. "We expect the Los Angeles economy to expand by 1.3 to 1.5 percent in 1996. That's a better performance than 1995."

The punishing 1990s recession and resultant payroll contractions in the Southland have left their mark on nearly every aspect of the local economy: property values have fallen (sometimes by half or more), retail sales have been sluggish, tax revenues weak, and apartment, industrial and office vacancies have risen.

Even yet, help-wanted classified job advertising in the Los Angeles Times is running at less than half the levels reached in the late 1980s.

"When the job base erodes, property values suffer, in particular home values," said George Pattison, senior vice president Investors' Property Services. "There is no escaping the basic fact that jobs count."

There are a few caveats in the new job numbers, both positive and negative.

Holes in data net

On the positive side, the data does not capture the self-employed, or workers in the cash-pay "underground" economy. In theory, there could have been even more job growth than indicated by the official statistics.

But on the other side of the coin, the official numbers also count every part-time job as a job, and include jobs at "temporary" work agencies. The numbers are not full-time equivalent jobs, but merely any jobs.

In fact, "temp work" has been one of the fastest growing sub-categories in the business services category.

Thus, a shift in the local job picture to temp work or part-time work could be captured in the official statistics as a boom in jobs.

"We don't distinguish between part-time and full-time jobs," said Peter Force, analyst with the state EDD. "And temp work is growing."

Pattison, of Investors' Property Services, said such a shift doesn't surprise him. "There is far more use of outsourcing, temps, part-time workers," he said. "That's a trend."

Too, the new job figures still show a 1.5 percent contraction in the durable-goods manufacturing field in the county to 341,900 workers from 347,000, although non-durable production, particularly apparel, showed expansion - rising 1.7 percent to 287,400 employees from 282,600.

Lower-pay jobs gain

Many economists have pointed out that durable- goods production jobs tend to be higher-paying, while non-durables jobs are lower-paying - as is certainly evidenced in the garment district, where minimum wage is the norm.

(A durable good, generally speaking, is a product expected to last three years or more, such as a television, car or toaster. A non-durable would be something less substantial, such as canned food, clothing or paper.)

While total manufacturing jobs in the county were almost unchanged at 629,300 in January, the services sector posted a sharp gain - jumping 5 percent, or 57,700 workers, to 1,208,100 from 1,151,400 in January 1995.

Business services and motion pictures industries logged the largest advances within the services sector, with business services boosting jobs by 9.4 percent to 278,400 and movies gaining 8.4 percent to 129,300 jobs.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the county Economic Development Corp., pointed out that the number of jobs in the county, at 3.77 million, is still down by about 400,000 jobs from peak levels reached in late 1989.

"The good news is that we are headed in the right direction. The reality is that we have a long way to go," said Kyser.

Out-migration hurts

Hand in hand with the job losses of the 1990s was an out-migration of the local population from Los Angeles County and the state, pointed out Pattison, a situation made more critical by the Southland's still relatively high house prices.

"We keep hoping the state's domestic outmigration, which reached 383,000 for the year ended July 1, 1995, will stop," said Pattison. "But right now, it appears to be still going on."

Other data indicates that Los Angeles County has suffered the brunt of the out-migration, noted Pattison.

"We are losing 35- to 55-year-olds, and gaining babies. That is not the way to build an economy," he said.

For those wishful that a newly growing job market will finally put a floor on house prices, Pattison issued a warning. "Housing costs are still substantially cheaper in most other parts of the nation. There is still a possibility that county house prices will regress to the national average," he said.

Of major metropolitan areas in the United States recently ranked by Coldwell Banker, only New York City, San Francisco and Honolulu had more-expensive housing, noted Pattison. "Dallas is so much cheaper - it is very hard to convince someone to put a factory here if they can put it in Dallas," he said.

Adibi of Chapman University said investors, property owners and others should not place too much stock in the January job numbers, or the 2.5 percent growth rate indicated by January's job rolls.

"Every January, the EDD comes out with numbers that seem high, and then over the year their numbers get lower, until they are too low, he said. "I hope the (Los Angeles) economy expands at a 2.5 percent rate for the year, but I think it will be closer to 1.3 percent to 1.5 percent."