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NCR's not top dog; public and non-profits are top employers

Take a closer look at the Miami Valley's top employers.

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Good Samaritan Hospital respiratory therapist Brian Cowgill and registered nurse Kristen Wright prep a patient for a CAT scan. Increasingly, the region relies on government jobs and jobs provided by nonprofits, such as hospitals. Staff photo by Jim Witmer

NCR's not top dog; public and non-profits are top employers

By Ben Sutherly, Staff Writer Updated 1:10 PM Sunday, June 7, 2009

DAYTON — NCR Corp. may have been the lone Fortune 500 company headquartered here, but it hasn’t been among the region’s top employers for years.

In fact, most of the Miami Valley’s biggest sources of jobs these days aren’t for-profit corporations like NCR, which announced this past week plans to move its world headquarters to Georgia. The public sector, universities, nonprofit hospitals and, of course, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, provide most of the Miami Valley’s biggest payrolls.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, said Robert Premus, an economics professor at Wright State University, which has more than 3,000 employees.

Across the country, “some of our strongest regional economies are dominated by government,”, Premus said.

Except for highly paid executives, “salaries in the public sector outstrip salaries in the private sector,” he said. “For ordinary workers, the public sector jobs are good jobs.”

But such employers aren’t engines of long-term economic growth, with the possible exception of federally funded WPAFB, Premus said. A shrinking or stagnant private sector likely will mean higher taxes in the long run, he said.

“It is a concern that all the growth is in the sectors other than the private, entrepreneurial areas,” said Tom Breitenbach, chief executive of Premier Health Partners, the region’s second largest employer after Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. There are “green shoots” in the private sector, he said, “but not nearly what we need to have.”

“There’s no question our success is a function of the economic vitality of the region,” Breitenbach said.

The private sector hasn’t just traditionally been the source of new jobs. Many corporations saw philanthropy as a mechanism for improving their corporate image, Premus said.

“You don’t get that from the public sector,” Premus said. “Money comes to the public sector with a lot of strings attached.”

And the private sector is a major source of innovation.

“A lot of our innovation came from corporate research and development,” Premus said. “In the region, we have less of that, and I think that’s going to hurt us.”

But Jim Leftwich, chief executive of the Dayton Development Coalition, said the combined research budgets of the Air Force Research Laboratory and that of other local research institutes such as Wright State’s and the University of Dayton’s is huge.

“This region is home to the largest collection of research and development in the entire state,” Leftwich said.

When the Dayton Development Coalition sold the region in recent years as part of recruitment efforts, it didn’t sell the opportunity to link up with NCR, he said. Instead, the focus is to help employers plug into existing industry clusters such as aerospace research and development, information technology, human sciences and health care, and advanced materials and advanced manufacturing.

“Our industry strengths are not necessarily around the largest organizations,” Leftwich said. “We have a portfolio of companies in this region, from 50-person companies to 800-person companies, who are collectively forming the strength of the economy. To look singly at the largest employers, it’s a bit misleading in terms of the representation it gives this region.”

Premus agrees. “The backbone of our economy is still the small and medium-sized businesses,” he said. “We still have a very vibrant business sector.

“A lot of these companies aren’t household names because they’re smaller and we don’t pay attention to them.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457 or bsutherly@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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