Meanwhile, companies from the greater Los Angeles area are reaping the harvest of underemployed Antelope Valley residents. Patricia Hudy, an administrative assistant at White Sands Technology in the San Fernando Valley, tried to find work in the Valley for five months. She moved to the region with her husband, Richard Combs, who is a paint chemist with P.R.C. DeSoto in Mojave, which specializes in aircraft coatings. Hudy wanted to work, but months of hunting yielded nothing, even though she applied for everything from accounting to customer relations positions and wasn't terribly concerned about the pay scale, she said. No positions seemed to be open for an educated person with a number of years of experience.
Residents also prove their desire to work on a daily basis.
Skilled and professional workers who live in the Valley often cannot find work locally that will pay what their education, experience or abilities can command, even in a tighter economy. They flock to the greater Los Angeles area by the thousands, even if working closer to home would be a preference. Valley residents will go to great lengths in order to work, even sacrificing personal time on the road for the privilege of employment. Exactly how many people in the Valley are ready, willing and able to work locally but have been unsuccessful in finding employment is not something that can be easily calculated. By combining figures from the Los Angeles County and the Kern County Employment Development Departments, David Myers, north county regional manager for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, calculated the Valley has a workforce of about 127,000.