Employment Orange County

Sarah Salazar didn't need Congress or the president to tell her that she had to get off welfare--or else. The welfare bosses in Los Angeles County told her that in December. And last month--with three small children at home, no high school degree and not having earned a paycheck in her life--she got her first job. Salazar, 28, is now making $8.50 an hour, typing patient information into a computer at an Arcadia medical office. "It's the perfect job for me," she said with a smile.

An economic resurgence predicted for Orange County at the start of the year has become a full-fledged growth spurt that should continue for the next several years, according to economists at a major real estate consulting firm. "This is the first time in six years we can sit here with a lot of optimism about the economy," said Michael Meyer, managing partner of the Newport Beach-based E&Y Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group.

Providing the strongest evidence yet that the state's economy is rebounding strongly, officials said Friday that California added 285,000 jobs across a broad range of industries in 1995, far more than state economists had originally estimated. And the robust activity continued into January, the state Employment Development Department said. Another 20,200 jobs were added to payrolls in the same month that the swooning national economy lost 201,000 jobs, largely because of frigid weather.

Sometime late this year, Orange County is likely to reach a milestone: its total nonfarm employment will match the peak in 1990. When that happens, the county will have replaced all of the nearly 60,000 jobs erased during the grueling recession. But what kinds of jobs have been created in Orange County to fill all those high-tech and manufacturing jobs lost? The answer is mixed.

Orange County law enforcement agencies are searching for a parolee who poses as a county employee and might have bilked as many as 60 job applicants out of thousands of dollars, police and sheriff's officials said Tuesday. Authorities identified the suspect as Richard Laurence Gomez, 33, and say he promised people county jobs if they first paid up to $500 in union fees.

In further evidence that California's economic recovery is steaming ahead, the state's jobless rate dropped for the third straight month in June to a 5 1/2-year low, as a broad spectrum of nonfarm employers added 32,800 jobs. The state's report Friday pegged unemployment at 7.1%, down from a revised 7.3% in May and 7.5% in April, blunting the latest concerns about technology companies and raising hopes of an imminent housing recovery.

Orange County's economic recovery remained on track in February, as nonfarm employers boosted their payrolls by 8,400 and the jobless rate edged down to 4.6% from a revised 4.7% in January, state officials reported Wednesday. A majority of the month-to-month job increases came in construction and local government, and were attributed to seasonal factors.

Fred Kayne, president of Fortune Fashions in Commerce, doesn't have to be told that unemployment is going down in Southern California. He's helping to bring that about. As co-owner of the firm that makes souvenir apparel for tourist locations, he has boosted his work force to 500 this year--including 150 skilled workers--from 400 a year ago.

Buoyed by robust seasonal hiring by retailers and a fledgling recovery in the long-depressed finance sector, Orange County closed out 1995 strongly by adding almost 6,000 jobs--its best December since the late 1980s. The county's unemployment rate for December was not released Friday by the state Employment Development Department, which said the federal government's recent shutdown resulted in delaying that part of the monthly jobs report. Orange County's jobless figure in November was 5.

Survey of Hiring Plans Completed * Manpower Inc., a major employment agency, says its quarterly survey of businesses in Orange County shows that 21% are planning to increase employment this winter, the same as nationally, while 71% say their employment levels won't change and 8% say they expect to cut their work forces. The company's nationwide survey had 11% of employers planning fourth-quarter job cuts.