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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Industry Clusters Develop Providing Higher Paying Jobs

Although still many Santa Clarita residents travel to jobs in the San Fernando Valley and other parts of the county each day, the city’s economic development manager says recent survey results show Santa Clarita itself is attracting plenty of high-paying jobs. The city does not have a business license fee, which makes it easy for companies to set up shop, but hard for city officials to keep track of jobs. Carrie Rogers, marketing and economic development manager for the City of Santa Clarita, said survey results show that four clusters have formed: aerospace manufacturing, biomedical companies, computer electronics businesses and entertainment businesses. “We wanted to find out what kind of labor base we have here,” said Rogers. “We don’t want people having to commute on the freeway every day in order to continue to produce a high quality of life. We want to see what we can do to help residents work close to home.” Larry Mankin, president and CEO of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the city has the ingredients that catch executives’ eyes when they are deciding where to move a company. “It’s a safe environment, it’s still pretty easy to get in and out of and we have a high-quality work force,” Mankin said. “We need to keep that up, the valley needs to put a lot of resources into education, public and post-secondary.” Doug Lynch, spokesman for Advanced Bionics, which employs close to 200 people in its Valencia offices, is planning to expand its manufacturing capabilities in the Santa Clarita Valley. It plans to move many of its Sylmar employees to Valencia and will likely hire more new employees as well. Lynch said that the company is forced to recruit many of it engineers from out-of-state and other countries, but it prefers to hire locally for as many positions as it can, like lab technicians. Jim Wolf is training students at College of the Canyons in hopes that they will be able to get jobs at companies like Advanced Bionics. Wolf is director of the school’s biotechnology program, which teaches students the skills they need to work in a scientific setting. “Originally, (students) were getting jobs that weren’t local. Some of them were going to the Ventura area, I have a student working at Amgen and one at Baxter,” said Wolf. “Getting them into the local Santa Clarita economy is a relatively new thing. But you actually have to grow these employees from home because it’s impossible to ask someone to move to the area for an entry-level technician’s salary, that’s not really a reasonable request.” Roger Seaver, president and CEO of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, said the hospital works closely with College of the Canyons’ nursing program and hires many of its graduates. The hospital, the sixth-largest employer in the region which is rapidly expanding to meet the needs of the valley’s growing population, will continue to rely on local community college training programs to find technicians as it upgrades its radiological equipment. “The College of the Canyons is the most dynamic community college in Southern California when it comes to working with local employers, and it’s no different with us, we have a great relationship,” said Seaver.

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