Big layoffs, closures claimed 2,200 Fresno, Valley jobs in 2019. How was employment affected?
Almost 2,200 workers in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties lost their jobs last year to permanent closures and layoffs. That’s about the same number of casualties reported by employers to the state in 2018.
While those numbers may seem dismal to the casual observer, record high employment more than offset the level of job losses.
More than one-third of the 2019 layoffs in the Valley came at the hands of a single employer, Irvine-based Alorica Inc., with the closure of a Fresno call center last fall that put 799 employees out of work.
The company filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act notice with the state Employment Development Department in August announcing its plan to close its Fresno call enter by the end of October.
Alorica operated a call center for a number of years in Clovis, and expanded greatly in 2010 by adding 500 people to handle what was expected to be a substantial volume of calls for Verizon Wireless as it began selling Apple iPhones for the first time.
The company opened a second call center, on Blythe Avenue in northwest Fresno, in 2012. In 2017, the company consolidated most of its workers from the two centers under one roof in Fresno and closed its Clovis location.
The Fresno closure was among a spate of Alorica layoffs across the U.S. over the past couple of years, according to published reports.
Elsewhere in the Valley, Cerner Corporation filed WARN notices for the closure in December of offices in Hanford, Reedley and Tulare. Between four facilities, the health-information technology company let go of 264 workers, collectively representing the region’s second-largest layoff by an employer.
Other big 2019 layoffs in the region for which WARN notices were filed with the state included:
- TreeHouse Private Brands, headquartered in Illinois, 243 affected employees in Visalia, February 2019.
- Pasadena-based Inter-Con Security Systems 233 affected employees in Exeter, November 2019.
- Morrison Healthcare, headquartered in Atlanta, 232 affected employees in Fresno, May 2019.
The closures of those companies’ sites in the Valley were joined by a spate of much smaller layoffs reported to the state as well as to the Fresno County Regional Workforce Development Board, which provides “rapid response” services to provide information to workers who are affected by planned closures and layoffs in Fresno County.
Statewide, permanent closures and layoffs resulted in displacing more than 38,700 workers last year, the state Employment Development Department reported. Alorica’s Fresno closure was the fifth-largest of the nearly 500 instances reported.
California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act generally requires a company to notify the state, and its employees, at least 60 days prior to a plant closing or mass layoff. The state law covers employers with at least 75 full- or part-time employees, and includes business closures affecting any number of employees or layoffs of 50 or more workers.
Job gains balance economic picture
By late 2019, however, raw job gains over the course of the year more than offset the number of jobs lost through the mass layoffs. Total employment in December 2019 in the five-county Valley region was estimated at 824,200 by the state Employment Development Department That was up by 4,700 from a year earlier.
What’s not accounted for in the state’s figures is what those new jobs pay compared to the positions that were lost through layoffs, nor is any distinction made between part-time and full-time jobs. Additionally, there are many smaller business closures that don’t rise to the threshold of requiring a company to file a WARN notice.
Some employers have already filed WARN notices for layoffs this year across the state, including the Valley.
Transform SR LLC, the company formed to take over assets of the bankrupt Sears department store chain, filed notices with the state for the closure of Sears stores in Fresno and Visalia by mid-February, together amounting to 191 employees.
TitleMax of California Inc., a loan company, filed notices in November that it will close its 19 offices across California, including its Clovis site which employs 10 people. The notice for the Clovis location indicates that the closure is set for April 1.
Year-end unemployment
Fresno County finished 2019 with an unemployment rate of 6.9% in December, and an average monthly rate of 7.2% for the year. That is the lowest unemployment rate since 1990, when the state adopted its current methodology for calculating joblessness.
Rates in Fresno County and the rest of the Valley, however, continue to hover at about double the statewide unemployment rate. The state’s rate in December was 3.7%, and the national rate was 3.5%.
The county’s largest employment gains, according to data released Friday by the state employment department, were in private-sector health care and social assistance. That sector added about 4,800 jobs between December 2018 and December 2019. Farm employment in Fresno County was up 2,100 positions compared to a year earlier, and federal, state and local government agencies reported a collective addition of 1,500 jobs over December 2018.
Private-sector industries reported employing 291,000 people in December in a state jobs survey. The farming industry represented the single-largest private employment sector in Fresno County, with an estimated 40,200 jobs in December, the EDD reported.
Among non-farm employers, about 28,000 people worked in social assistance, a field that includes in-home care aides. Manufacturers of both durable and non-durable goods, including food-processing and manufacturing, had 26,400 workers in December, while about 20,300 people worked in construction.
Government agencies in Fresno County employed more than 77,000 people at the federal, state and local level, including about 37,700 in local public school districts.
This story was originally published January 24, 2020 at 3:08 PM.
