The economics of aerospace

Officially, this isolated corner of Los Angeles County is called the Antelope Valley. But many residents call it the Aerospace Valley, and in the recession of the early 1990s, it became known as the Foreclosure Capital of the United States.

The impact of the last recession still lingers, and the region faces more layoffs as B-2 production winds down. Although hopes are high for the joint strike fighter, a next-generation space shuttle and aircraft maintenance, uncertainty remains as prominent as the sagebrush and Joshua trees of the surrounding desert.

"I'm just your day-in, day-out employee who ... is eventually probably going to get laid off. We just had a bunch more layoffs," said Andy Visokey, a 14-year Northrop Grumman employee who took a lower-paying job last year to stay with the company. Visokey is also a Lancaster city councilman.

Aerospace lost more jobs than any other sector of the California economy in the last recession. Palmdale and Lancaster, with a combined population of 225,000, were especially hard hit, losing 40,000 aerospace jobs in towns whose street names, like Avenue L-4 or Avenue K-10, feel as though they were laid down by aircraft engineers.

Those cities were not alone. About 90,000 workers in Burbank were once employed in aerospace. The number declined to 20,000 by the late 1980s. Today, it is fewer than 300. Its once-busy Machinists' Hall is now a supermarket.

Communities with diversified economies found new opportunities.

In Burbank, for example, entertainment took its place, and then some. Walt Disney and Warner Bros. have taken over Lockheed Martin facilities.

But aerospace was - and still is - the only major industry in Palmdale and Lancaster, and the sense of isolation goes beyond the towns' borders.

The only direct link to the rest of Los Angeles County is a 50-mile drive southwest over the San Gabriel Mountains. There are only mountains to the north and west and thousands of square miles of Mojave Desert to the east.

Aware of the region's vulnerability, political leaders are anxious to diversify. Landing the Rite-Aid drug chain's West Coast distribution center and a call center were major coups, even though those are lower-paying jobs. But the transition has been tough.

Randy Malcolm, 42, a father of three and stepfather of four, had been an engineer and tool designer for 21 years. He was laid off from Northrop Grumman last March, given 60 days notice and job search assistance, but no severance pay.

"I applied everywhere (in the aerospace industry). I didn't get any kind of job offer from anybody. I was kind of surprised. I thought I had a lot of experience," he said.

He received state assistance for training in a new engineering field, geographic mapping systems. But he spent most of his retirement savings on living expenses before finding a new job earlier this month at one-third less pay and fewer benefits.

"I like the new career I've started. I'm very glad to be here. But it is a shock," he said.

Wayne Woodhall, 58, is starting down the road Malcolm just completed. A systems testing engineer who worked on hydraulics systems on the B-2 bomber, Woodhall lost his job of 18 years on Oct. 1. His 21-year-old son, a Lockheed machinist, learned a few weeks ago that he will probably be out of work in January.

"I was very self-assured when I started giving my resume out over the Internet. At first, there was no response. When I started getting responses, they were, `We have no openings now, but we will keep your resume on file,' " said Woodhall, a recently elected Antelope Valley College trustee.

After two months searching for another aerospace job, Woodhall gave up and enrolled this month in a computer-aided design training program. But first that means eight months of commuting three hours a day to a school in the San Fernando Valley.

One source of hope is that while aerospace statewide has shrunk in half since the end of the Cold War, a lot of what remains has consolidated into Palmdale's regional airport at Air Force Plant 42 Airport complex, a high-security military airfield surrounded by four huge production and research complexes owned by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Another bright spot is the decision last week by a subsidiary of Swiss airline industry holding company SAirGroup to place its North American aircraft maintenance and overhaul operation at the Palmdale Airport, creating as many as 6,000 jobs.

In addition, Edwards Air Force Base, 30 miles to the north, remains the nation's top test facility for new military aircraft.

"Historically, from the first jets in the 1940s, every plane in the Air Force inventory was tested and evaluated at Edwards," said Bob Johnstone, a former flight test engineer at Edwards who now heads the aerospace office in Lancaster's city Planning Department.

Plant 42, which manufactured many of those planes, is the site for developing the X-33, a nextgeneration space shuttle, and a prototype of the joint strike fighter.

If the fighter goes into production - which is still uncertain - Palmdale would be a strong competitor to build it.

"That could be a 25-year run. That's a lifetime in this industry," Johnstone said.

Still, in a sign of the uncertainty, huge portions of Plant 42's facilities remain vacant. Six-foothigh for-sale signs stand outside the cyclone fence at a former B-1 bomber plant, the only activity coming from jack rabbits scurrying across the desert.

Yet, that is just a portent of things to come. The site chosen for the Swiss maintenance facility is Site 9, where the B-1 was once produced before entering the Air Force fleet.

On Wednesday: Agriculture plugs along. And on Sunday, read the Valley Press' Spotlight, Space Available: A look at the Valley economy's past, present and future.