After nearly a decade of declining employment, manufacturers added 646 jobs in Summit County last year.But while several other categories of employers also posted gains, according to Beacon Journal research of the largest employers in Summit County for 2011, overall employment continues to fall far short of pre-recession levels.Cleveland economist George Zeller cheered the county’s 2.3 percent growth in manufacturing jobs from 2010 to 2011.“It’s a recovery. Let’s take it,” he said.Zeller said Summit isn’t alone. Manufacturing added even more jobs in the Youngstown-Mahoning Valley area, thanks in part to increased production at the Lordstown auto complex, where the Chevrolet Cruze is made.Cleveland State University economist Ned Hill said the Summit-Akron region benefits from being home to manufacturers supplying the auto and aeronautical industries, which “are seeing a revival.”“The Detroit Three supply chain is having some vibrancy that they haven’t seen in the last three years,” said Hill, dean of CSU’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. But the manufacturing sector still has a long way to go — Summit County needs 6,398 jobs to reach 2007 employment levels.The county’s total employment of 254,000 is about 7 percent less than in 2007, with sectors in health care and education as the exceptions. They are the only two employment categories that added jobs during the Great Recession, which officially started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.Since 2007, health-care and social-assistance employment has risen 8.2 percent and private-sector educational services have increased 10 percent.Summa remains No. 1So it is no surprise that a medical organization — Summa Health System — once again is the No. 1 employer in Summit County and among the top 20 employers in Northeast Ohio.Summa — owner of Akron City, Barberton and St. Thomas hospitals — employed nearly 7,000 people in the county last year, according to the Beacon Journal’s annual survey.Akron General Health System and Akron Children’s Hospital also were among Summit County’s largest employers.While overall jobs in health care were up, Zeller said those types of jobs have limits as an economic engine.“How long can we continue to have this growth? How are we going to finance it?” he asked, amid increased pressure from consumers, employers and the government to cut medical costs.The Beacon Journal’s employment survey included private companies, as well as government agencies, such as Akron Public Schools, that employ more than 1,000. Employers were asked to provide a count of full-time and part-time staff or a “full-time equivalent” number that includes both full- and part-time workers.As in previous years, the list continues to boast companies headquartered in Summit, including Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and InfoCision Management Corp., a nationally known telemarketing company, in Bath Township.InfoCision posted significant employment growth from 2010 to 2011, gaining more than 200 employees.The company opened an office in Green in 2010, and last year launched an effort to boost employment there by 300 people.Goodyear remained the county’s largest manufacturer, primarily because of the number of white-collar employees at its corporate campus, rather than the number of blue-collar workers. Goodyear provided the same estimate of employees — 3,000 — that it has since at least 2007.While the private sector posted gains last year, the ranks of government workers shrank.Taking the biggest hit was Summit County government, which shed more than 200 employees last year. The county, like other local governments in the difficult economy, has struggled to deal with falling revenue, including lower tax collections.The county laid off some child support enforcement workers and reduced staff through attrition, said Jason Dodson, chief of staff for Summit County Executive Russ Pry.The city of Akron’s payroll dropped by roughly 200 employees. Finance Director Diane Miller Dawson said the cuts came through attrition.Among all public job categories, federal government took the biggest employee hit, with the number of jobs declining in the county by 19 percent, or 470 jobs. But that drop was almost all in temporary workers hired to conduct the 2010 census.This year probably will see a further decline in federal jobs as the U.S. Postal Service continues to trim its work force in the face of a drastic decline in first-class mail volume. The service has proposed closing its Akron mail-processing facility, which employs about 400 workers. Zach Schiller of the economic research group Policy Matters Ohio said the loss of public jobs is a drag on the recovery.“If you want to cut government, it’s going to have economic consequences,” he said. “That isn’t to say we should never get rid of a government job, but it has consequences.”Schiller said fewer government workers means less consumer spending.“There’s no free lunch out there,” he said. “Government workers are workers with paychecks and bills to pay just like everybody else.”No new names on listThe names on this year’s list of the county’s largest employers were unchanged. There was a casualty in recent years, with Chrysler closing its Twinsburg Stamping Plant in 2010 as part of its bankruptcy restructuring. The Twinsburg plant once employed 3,000 or more and at the end of 2008 still had a payroll of roughly 1,200.Also no longer on the list are local operations of YRC Worldwide Inc. The financially troubled trucking firm, headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., has slashed area employment in the past few years. The company is selling the former Roadway headquarters in Akron to a real- estate developer who plans to turn it into a multi-tenant facility.Other national companies boast a large number of workers in Summit, but employment does not reach 1,000.Bridgestone Americas Inc. almost makes the list, employing 845 people (982 including contractors) at its Akron complex in 2011. Those figures do not include the company’s retail operations and are virtually unchanged from 2010.National retailers also have large numbers of workers in Summit. Target Corp., for example, employed nearly 800 full- and part-time workers in the county last year.Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the state’s largest private employer, with a head count of more than 50,000 employees. Wal-Mart does not provide employment figures for individual counties.National brand PepsiCo employed 756 workers in Summit in November 2010. Figures for last year were not available.PepsiCo said Thursday it is planning cuts of more than 8,000 workers worldwide. Company officials could not be reached for information on whether workers in Summit County would be affected.Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com.
Computer-assisted reporting manager David Knox can be reached at 330-996-3532 or dknox@thebeaconjournal.com.