Chronic Joblessness Seen in State’s Aerospace Industry

In a new study that confirms the worst fears about the human cost of California’s defense slump, UCLA researchers have found that half of the aerospace workers laid off in 1989 were jobless two years later or had left the state.

An additional analysis shows that workers laid off more recently are not faring any better. Just 16% of California aerospace workers laid off over a one-year period in 1991 and 1992 found new jobs quickly, and a third were jobless more than seven months.

The study, the first to track what has happened to aerospace workers who have lost jobs in the unprecedented downturn, found a pattern of chronic joblessness, falling incomes and downward mobility for tens of thousands of workers. A copy of the study, which will be released today, was made available to The Times.

“It is clear that aerospace workers are not going back to new employment,” said UCLA Prof. Paul Ong, who authored the report along with graduate student Janette R. Lawrence. “The state’s economy is in poor shape, so new jobs are not being created and there is not a demand for skills held by displaced aerospace workers.”

Ong studied two groups of workers, one group laid off in 1989 and the other between April, 1991, and June, 1992. He found that 84% of the workers in the later group were unemployed for periods from a few weeks up to a year.

Laid-off aerospace workers in Los Angeles County had the hardest time finding new jobs, but workers in relatively affluent Orange County also had a tough time.

The San Fernando Valley was particularly hard hit. The study found that 59% of laid-off aerospace workers in the Van Nuys-Burbank area either remained unemployed or left the state. That ratio was the second highest in the state, after the 60% rate in the core Los Angeles area.

Older workers and engineers seemed to fare the worst. Forty-two percent of workers older than 55 and 41% of engineers faced long-term joblessness, defined as 27 weeks of unemployment.

The study examined unemployment data, tracking individuals to determine how long they remained on unemployment insurance and whether they later found jobs at other California companies. Thus, the study is based on hard data, rather than statistical estimates.

The workers laid off in 1989 were caught in a state economy undergoing wrenching changes. “California is encountering the process of high-wage, high-skill jobs being replaced by low-wage, low-skill jobs,” the study said.

By region, the core of Los Angeles County fared the worst, with 60% of the 1989 group of workers failing to find new jobs or leaving the state. In Orange County, 56% of workers did not reappear on the job rolls.

About a third of the workers laid off in 1989 found new jobs, but their earnings dropped 33%, to an annual average of about $22,000.

“They ended up at low-wage firms, in the retailing sector and the service sector, where they often did not have health insurance,” Ong said.

Only 17% of those workers laid off in 1989 were able to find new aerospace jobs at close to their original wages.

It appears likely that even fewer of today’s laid-off workers will find new aerospace jobs in the state’s biggest manufacturing industry.

California’s aerospace industry lost more than 130,000 direct aerospace jobs through February, 1993, off from a peak of 376,200 jobs in 1988, the study found.

An additional 40,200 jobs in related industries were lost. As a result, the state lost $5 billion in direct wages and $4 billion in indirect wages.

Among the most recent blows in the Valley have been Hughes Aircraft Co.’s announcement in April that it planned to close its Canoga Park missile-design plant, where 1,900 people work, and shift the operation to Tucson, Ariz.

Last month, Calabasas-based Lockheed Corp. said it would lay off 400 workers over the next three months from the Palmdale and Burbank offices of Lockheed Advanced Development Co.--famous as the “Skunk Works” that has designed advanced military aircraft since World War II. The 10% cut in the work force is part of Lockheed’s continuing shift of aerospace production work out of the state.

And Rocketdyne, the Canoga Park-based unit of Rockwell International Corp. that primarily builds rocket engines for the space shuttle and other projects, has pared its local work force from about 8,800 in 1989 to 7,000--including about 6,000 in the Valley. Talk of cutting the federal budget for the planned space station has raised the prospect of further cuts.

When told of the UCLA findings, a union representative at the International Assn. of Machinists, District 727, in Burbank, which has lost thousands of aerospace members over the years, snapped: “Well, isn’t that obvious?” She declined to comment further.

An example is Robert Giedeman of West Hills, who over the last three decades has worked as an engineer at Hughes, Northrop and Lockheed. His last job with an aerospace firm was Allied-Signal’s Air Research operation in Torrance. He was laid off in 1987.

Since then, Giedeman, 64, has found temporary work, but for the last two years he has been unemployed. “I’ve been an engineer for 35 years,” he said. “I have two degrees, I made $60,000 to $80,000 a year, and now I can’t even get a job for $10 an hour.”

Giedeman, who says he can’t afford to retire, would gladly take a job for $22 to $25 an hour.

“But nobody wants to pay anything,” he said. “I went to a sporting goods store. They offered me $5 an hour. I said, ‘Are you crazy?’ ”

Ong found that Los Angeles County bore 66% of the total losses in California, or 80,200 jobs. The impact varied widely within the county. Van Nuys/Burbank fared the worst, with 41% of the workers laid off starting in 1991 on extended jobless benefits.

African-Americans and Latinos suffered above-average layoff rates, the UCLA study found. Latinos represent 14% of the state’s aerospace work force, but accounted for 17% of the 1992 layoffs. African-Americans represent 8% of the work force, but 10% of those laid off.