Good News on Jobs Is in the North

Columnist James Flanigan (“Can Europe Become More Like California?” Feb. 9) writes, “And there is special regard [among Europeans] for California, which is seen, rightly, as having come back from recession and the decline of the defense industry by putting people to work in new industries related to computer and software development, business and financial services, foreign trade and entertainment.”

While taken as a general whole there is nothing obviously wrong with Mr. Flanigan’s statement, it is very misleading with respect to Los Angeles in particular. Los Angeles is the specific area which has seen a catastrophic collapse of its once-dominant defense industry. Hundreds of thousands of employees have been laid off, and many of those thousands have had to move out of state in order to find any comparable employment. Major corporate headquarters have moved to other states, and modern manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles have been shuttered.

And contrary to Mr. Flanigan’s statement, nothing has replaced the defense industry in Los Angeles. In fact, The Times recently noted that the largest employment category remaining in Los Angeles is garment manufacturing, a low-paying, Third World-like industry under intense competition around the world.

While the contraction of the defense industry has plunged Los Angeles into a continuing and unrelenting recession, it is Northern California that has received the benefits of “new industries related to computer and software development.”

There is not a single company in the Los Angeles business complex that compares with the likes of Northern California-located Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Oracle or Netscape.

ALFRED D. ELIASON

Santa Barbara