"Jobs"...Here's how it's going in my neighborhood...
Buffeted by recession and effects of
terrorism, Top 100 employers in Tarrant
County are Riding it out
By MARIA M. PEROTIN
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Clearly battered by the economic recession, many of Tarrant County's
largest employers shrank their payrolls last year. A Star-Telegram
compilation of the county's Top 100 employers illustrates what local
companies and thousands of laid-off workers have been experiencing for
months: Several industries were whacked with widespread job losses, and
few businesses added employees.
Although some defense contractors and health care providers show staff
increases, travel companies, technology firms and manufacturers all have
fewer workers this year.
The numbers reflect the weakness in Texas' economy, which fell into a
recession last spring and then was slammed by the financial fallout of
September's terrorist attacks, says Fiona Sigalla, an economist at the
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
"That hit Tarrant County pretty hard," Sigalla says. "But at the same time,
Tarrant County has had the exciting news of some renewed defense
spending, sort of reviving an industry that had been on the decline."
Sigalla, who believes the worst of the local recession has passed, was
referring to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.'s victory last fall in the
competition to get the contract to build the military's joint strike fighter. The
new defense contract prompted a wave of job applicants, many of them
unemployed technology workers, to inundate the company with resumes.
Still, Lockheed's success wasn't enough to offset Tarrant County's rise in
joblessness.
The county's unemployment rate now stands at 5.8 percent, up from 3.3
percent a year ago. And the Fort Worth-Arlington area now ranks No. 15
among Texas' 27 metropolitan areas for joblessness.
Among the hardest hit local companies were those in the travel sector,
which saw demand plummet after the Sept. 11 attacks. Four of the county's
travel-related firms - AMR Corp., Delta Air Lines, Sabre Holdings Corp. and
LSG Sky Chefs - reported an average 14 percent drop in employment from
last year.
AMR Corp., parent of American Airlines and Tarrant's biggest employer, cut
its local staff 7 percent to 29,620 workers. Those job losses came amid an
unprecedented $1.8 billion loss in 2001, and the company has warned
investors that another loss is likely this year.
Last year's job cuts actually were less severe than AMR originally had
anticipated, with early projections calling for 20,000 layoffs worldwide and
about 5,000 here.
"Some people retired. Some people left. Some jobs we did not have to
eliminate," airline spokeswoman Andrea Rader says. "That's how we
managed to keep the numbers down to, companywide, about 11,000."
Delta, which has a hub at D/FW Airport, shed almost 1,300, or 21 percent,
of its local workers, bringing its new total to 4,738.
Travel technology giant Sabre trimmed 34 percent of its local workers to
3,800 employees in the past year, and caterer LSG Sky Chefs contracted 64
percent, to 583 employees.
At AMR, the terrorist attacks devastated the company at a time when its
purchase of TWA had propelled it to become the world's largest airline, but
weakening passenger traffic had been hurting the bottom line.
"This time last year, we were on the brink of just exploding into growth,"
Rader says. "We've really had to scale back those plans considerably. But
long-term, we want to get back to that kind of growth again."
Already, AMR has recalled about 3,000 workers since last fall's layoffs, and
the carrier intends to return 400 flight attendants to the sky in April.
"Where we are now is we're kind of cautiously optimistic that bookings are
looking better," Rader says. "The economy might be turning around, but I
don't think we're deluding ourselves that we're going to have a profitable
quarter. There's some speculation that this may not even be a profitable
year."
Despite the tumultuous year, the local aerospace industry generally held
steady.
Bolstered by its October win of the coveted joint strike fighter contract,
Lockheed Martin boosted its work force by 8 percent over last year, bringing
it to 11,700 employees.
But Bell Helicopter Textron, which saw its V-22 Osprey grounded after two
fatal crashes, has slashed 7 percent of the company's payroll since last
year. Workers now are banking on a new management team and a fresh
round of V-22 flight tests for a turnaround.
At Tarrant's technology firms, which felt the pinch of recession early and
badly, thousands of workers have been dropped in the past year.
One of the biggest declines came at Nokia, which shrank 30 percent, to
1,900 workers. The company fell from No. 19 on last year's ranking of top
employers to No. 38.
Most of those job cuts resulted from Nokia's decision last year to shift work
from a Fort Worth phone-manufacturing plant to factories in Mexico and
South Korea, where the company has boosted its capacity.
"We're shifting production to these other countries, because we have
manufacturing facilities in those countries today," company spokeswoman
Virve Virtanen says.
Nokia shuttered its plant on Diplomacy Road in Fort Worth last year and
consolidated its operations at Alliance Airport, where the company still
manufactures phones and provides engineering support.
Cellphone maker Motorola, which was hit hard by declining demand as the
wireless industry slowed in 2001, shaved 24 percent of its work force in the
past year. With 1,900 remaining employees, the company's ranking
dropped from No. 23 last year to tie with Nokia at No. 38 this year.
In spite of the region's economic woes, 42 of the Top 100 Tarrant
employers reported job gains - many between 2 percent and 9 percent, but
some much more dramatic.
The Star-Telegram asked employers to include "full-time equivalent"
employees in their tallies for the first time this year, so some of the job
gains over last year may be attributable to the revised calculation.
Among the growing employers were several higher-learning institutions,
which showed an average 8 percent work force increase.
The University of North Texas Health Science Center grew 26 percent, to
1,232 workers, jumping to No. 54 from its spot at No. 60 on last year's Top
100.
The University of Texas at Arlington and Tarrant County College both added
workers as well.
Various retailers, which typically employ lots of part-time workers, also
reported significant increases. |
