Entertainment Industry Led Burbank Out of Doldrums By CARLOS MARTINEZ Staff Reporter For decades, Burbank lived off of the aerospace business, which provided tens of thousands of well-paying jobs that fueled the nation’s defense industry. Today, the aerospace plants are all but gone and Burbank’s economy is driven by an entertainment industry that accounts for 56 percent of all sales transactions in the city, according to a report by the Yorba Linda-based financial consulting firm The Natelson Co. Of the 171,000 people who held jobs in Burbank last year, 133,000 were in the entertainment industry clustered around the city and nearby North Hollywood. “We’ve been fortunate that, as aerospace wound down, the entertainment area began picking up for us,” said Burbank City Manager Robert “Bud” Ovrom. According to Natelson, employment in the entertainment industry in Burbank has grown from about 25,000 in 1987 to its current level. At the same time, manufacturing jobs declined from 33,000 to about 10,000 as Lockheed Martin closed its facilities and moved manufacturing into the Antelope Valley and out of state. In the early 1980s, the city’s aerospace firms were in the thick of a Reagan Era defense buildup, but by 1992 Lockheed had closed its Burbank plant and taken its 12,000 jobs with it. Despite a slow start, the city was able to rebuild its economy, primarily by helping The Walt Disney Co., Warner Brothers and a slew of other large entertainment firms expand through development efforts and tax incentives. Today, the city’s employment base has continued to grow. It had an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent last month, well below the state level of 6.3 percent for the same period. Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., said Burbank has benefited from its marketing strategy and efforts to lure more entertainment-related businesses to the city. “You look at Burbank and they’re very business-friendly. They don’t have much in terms of business taxes and they have their own utility,” he said, referring to quite another story with cities in Southern California Edison’s domain. Kyser said Burbank’s ability to transform itself from a struggling manufacturing economy to one based on motion picture and television production is no small feat. “They helped to convert old manufacturing facilities into offices and helped businesses relocate and others to expand there,” he said. Between 1987 and 1997, the number of entertainment-related businesses in Burbank grew from 238 firms to 440, according to city officials. While the bulk of those employed in the industry are freelancers who move from project to project, earning an average of $21,000 a year, those who work for studios or hold steady jobs with motion picture-related firms average an annual $74,000, the Natelson report showed. Such numbers reflect a recent industry study that showed about 60 percent of entertainment industry workers are freelancers who go from one job to another and often have trouble sustaining their careers during economic downturns, said Don Nakamoto, labor market specialist for the Verdugo Jobs Center in Glendale. “It’s a down period now for entertainment,” Nakamoto said. “The networks stockpiled a lot of shows because of the threat of a writers’ strike. They’ve cut back production pretty significantly and, when terrorists made some direct threats to studios and networks, a lot of projects were canceled.” While jobs have been lost in the past year, Nakamoto predicts an upturn in the market within six months. “There are already some signs of improvement,” he said. Burbank’s Ovrom said the city has benefited from increased film and television production in recent years, which has attracted a number of support businesses for the industry. “It’s no longer just Disney, NBC and Warner Brothers who are here, but postproduction companies, sound and other companies who serve the industry,” he said. Despite the influx of new firms into the city, its biggest employers continue to be Warner Brothers, with 4,500 employees; Disney, with 3,340; NBC, 1,350; and the ABC network with about 500 employees. While Kyser hails the city’s economic efforts, he cautioned that the entertainment industry is not recession-proof, as some may think. “It’s still subject to strikes and runaway production issues that can sometimes linger for long periods,” he said.
