Last aerospace firm (Northrop Grumman) leaving Los Angeles

[Mach50]

Northrop, Lockheed Martin and Macdonald Douglas were the first 3 companies I applied for in L.A. when I got my degree in 96, now they are all pretty much gone.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Mach50

Northrop, Lockheed Martin and Macdonald Douglas were the first 3 companies I applied for in L.A. when I got my degree in 96, now they are all pretty much gone.

Huh?

Northrop has something like 20K employees in Southern California (currently 520 open positions in CA alone)
McDc is now Boeing and there's like 25K employees in Southern California (Boeing's hurting: GMD, FCS, C-17 have all had bad times....)
Lockheed is still in SoCal, but mostly in the desert??? Not sure.
Plus there's Raytheon (210 open positions in CA), SAIC, Aerospace Corporation, CSC, General Dynamics, General Atomics, Sparta (now Cobham), BAE Systems, and lots of little guys.

Just because the Northrop Grumman mahogany row moved to DC doesn't mean Southern California isn't the Aerospace Capital of the World

[Mach50]

Originally Posted by Charles

Huh?

Northrop has something like 20K employees in Southern California (currently 520 open positions in CA alone)
McDc is now Boeing and there's like 25K employees in Southern California (Boeing's hurting: GMD, FCS, C-17 have all had bad times....)
Lockheed is still in SoCal, but mostly in the desert??? Not sure.
Plus there's Raytheon (210 open positions in CA), SAIC, Aerospace Corporation, CSC, General Dynamics, General Atomics, Sparta (now Cobham), BAE Systems, and lots of little guys.

Just because the Northrop Grumman mahogany row moved to DC doesn't mean Southern California isn't the Aerospace Capital of the World

That's true Charles, I guess what I meant is that many of the jobs have disbursed to other areas when they used to be concentrated here. SoCal used to be "the place" for Aero back in the early-mid 90's. Same thing is happening up here in Silicon Valley with software jobs.

Lockheed is still in El Segundo too, but it has shrunk considerably.

[Mike121]

Raytheon has also been expanding its presence in D.C. You have to have people close to where the money is, and right now, the government is where the money is. When L.A. ruled the world, the government would come out here to do business, but, no longer.

But I don't think that means that the engineering jobs are necessarily moving out to DC and Baltimore.

For example, the Air Force had Los Angeles Air Force Base on the chopping block, but decided to keep it around, because it helps the Air Force keep tabs on all the contracts it manages here in L.A.

And, as hard as it is to believe, greater LA remains the largest manufacturing base for the whole of the U.S.A.

[BRinSM]

it's similar to the consolidation of the music industry. although there are offices throughout the country, corporate functions for the major labels have been moving to LA from NY and other cities in the last 5 or so years (except in one instance where LA offices were moved to NY).

[bhcompy]

Originally Posted by Charles

Huh?

Northrop has something like 20K employees in Southern California (currently 520 open positions in CA alone)
McDc is now Boeing and there's like 25K employees in Southern California (Boeing's hurting: GMD, FCS, C-17 have all had bad times....)
Lockheed is still in SoCal, but mostly in the desert??? Not sure.
Plus there's Raytheon (210 open positions in CA), SAIC, Aerospace Corporation, CSC, General Dynamics, General Atomics, Sparta (now Cobham), BAE Systems, and lots of little guys.

Just because the Northrop Grumman mahogany row moved to DC doesn't mean Southern California isn't the Aerospace Capital of the World

Douglas facilities have been mostly destroyed and turned in to housing developments. My grandmother, who worked for Hughes and TRW for decades and has lived here since the late 40's, cried when she saw it. Boeing is moving more and more work to Huntsville and gradually reducing their California footprint by shutting down buildings and condensing campuses.

Northrop will likely stay for a while, but with headquarters moving out, they will most likely reduce the force in time.

In the end I expect manufacturing for most things to move to the South, where the presence is growing, the business climate is much better, and wages are cheaper. Satellite/space/missile related business may stay here in some capacity, but even that has mostly been moved to Huntsville as far as Boeing is concerned.

California just isn't a great place to do business.

As far as all those jobs you mention, keep in mind many of them stay open with no intention of actually filling them quickly. The qualifications are hard set and many of them require years of industry experience and a current security clearance to even get an interview. Hard to get industry experience when everyone requires it, so essentially you're dealing with people lucky enough to get hotly contested internships in college and ex-military in very specific professions.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by bhcompy

Boeing is moving more and more work to Huntsville and gradually reducing their California footprint by shutting down buildings and condensing campuses.
In the end I expect manufacturing for most things to move to the South, where the presence is growing, the business climate is much better, and wages are cheaper. Satellite/space/missile related business may stay here in some capacity, but even that has mostly been moved to Huntsville as far as Boeing is concerned.

Boeing Anaheim is pretty much gone though some of it is staying in Anaheim. Most of it went to Huntington Beach.
Boeing Long Beach has some huge buildings which look pretty new. My buddy just got laid off there though.

Huntsville has 3000 Boeing employees but maybe 500,000 live in the region.
Southern California has maybe 25000(??) Boeing employees but 18,000,000 people live in the region.

[hsw]

It's a competitive world: cos. move HQs to locations that make sense to attract talented workers and/or be near major customers...or to reduce costs (and increase profits)

Despite CA's anti-business climate and taxes, SiliconValley continually creates far more high-income engineering jobs and wealth than anywhere in world....where are Intel, Cisco, HP, Apple, Oracle based? google is only ~10yrs old; where are facebook/twitter, etc based?

In colleges >30yrs ago, smart kids would often choose Aeronautics or MechEngg, but migration to EE, then to CompSci occurred ~25yrs ago

But US still engineers some of world's best $50MM business planes at Gulfstream, built in GA

And Germany engineers/builds arguably world's best $200K cars at Mercedes in Stuttgart

Neither GA nor Germany has notable engineering schools of caliber of Stanford or Berkeley

And neither GA nor Germany has much tech wealth or many high-income jobs to show for their great planes/cars....many of world's latest/greatest Gulfstreams and Mercedes are owned/enjoyed by wealthy Californians, usu PaloAlto/Woodside/Atherton residents

[bhcompy]

Originally Posted by Charles

Boeing Anaheim is pretty much gone though some of it is staying in Anaheim. Most of it went to Huntington Beach.
Boeing Long Beach has some huge buildings which look pretty new. My buddy just got laid off there though.

Huntsville has 3000 Boeing employees but maybe 500,000 live in the region.
Southern California has maybe 25000(??) Boeing employees but 18,000,000 people live in the region.

And those numbers are gradually changing. Take missile defense.. used to be pretty big here, now over half the workers are in Huntsville and the rest are peppered across CA, CO(?), Alaska, etc. My family member in the project does constant stays in Alaska and has had their subordinates laid off and coworkers mostly transferred and is looking for a possible transfer(possibly to COS because they want to retire out west) because missile defense is a sinking ship here.

Companies in all sectors are condensing presence and/or leaving CA and only keeping land they own outright. Defense is no different, as you see with whats going on in Anaheim, the projects dropping off or shifting/merging/condensing between Huntington, Seal, Anaheim, and El Segundo, NOC moving to DC, etc.

[A.J._in_L.A.]

New Northrop Grumman CEO Wesley Bush shows why he got the job - latimes.com

Anybody read this article? It's basically what we all thought the move was about, just trying to get closer to the customer.