By L.M. SIXEL
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
If you want to understand the lives of Houstonians, a good place to start is the list of the city's largest employers.
From the looks of it, the biggest employers are benefiting from a variety of factors, including discount-minded consumers, high energy prices and a growing need for medical care.
The three biggest employment sectors in the Chronicle 100 employment survey a decade ago: retailing, medicine and energy, have all been contributing to Houston's growth.
Large Houston-area companies and medical institutions are surveyed to find the 100 largest based on their total full-time and part-time employees in a 10-county area.
Some examples of the changes over the past decade from the survey of Houston's 100 biggest employers are:
• Both the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Texas Children's Hospital more than doubled their payrolls in the past decade.
• Wal-Mart's Houston-area work force more than doubled to 28,780, and H-E-B nearly tripled the number of its employees in Houston to 9,405.
• In the energy sector, Baker Hughes reported that its Houston-area work force has grown 63 percent to 6,854.
Two Medical Center giants
A decade ago, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was the 15th-largest employer in Houston. Today it is No. 5, with 16,064 workers.
During the past decade, M.D. Anderson has treated twice as many patients, nearly tripled the number of faculty research projects and has more than doubled its space at the Texas Medical Center, said its president, John Mendelsohn.
As the population ages and Texas grows, the number of cancer cases will grow. M.D. Anderson now treats about 10 percent of the cancer patients in the state — plus many from out of state.
Texas Children's Hospital is in the midst of a $1.5 billion expansion. That includes creating the nation's first pediatric neurological research institute, adding eight floors to expand programs at the Feigin Center for Research and building community-based clinics in low-income neighborhoods, said Ryan Rice, assistant director of public relations.
Texas Children's Hospital also added its own maternity center for high-risk pregnancies last year. Until the new facility to house this unit is finished, Texas Children's is using space at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital.
"We can do things we couldn't do 10 years ago," said chief operating officer Randall Wright, referring to surgeries like repair of genetic heart defects.
Results of energy demand
It's been a good decade for the energy industry.
Ten years ago the energy business around here was coming off a tough time.
"We were just ending a decade of relatively modest spending and modest growth," said Gary Flaharty, Baker Hughes' director of investor relations. "We were entering into a decade where our customers were investing more heavily in developing oil and gas reserves to meet worldwide demand."
Most of the jobs added by the oil-field supplier have been in manufacturing and engineering, Flaharty said.
But that was still the era of the dot-com boom. Oil and natural gas prices didn't really take off until the early part of this decade.
Today, with oil prices hovering three times higher than in 1997, employment is rising through the oil and gas sector.
Exxon Mobil Corp. now employs 14,800 in the Houston area — up from 12,900 a decade ago when it was just Exxon. Shell Oil Co. employs 11,900, compared with 8,600 back then, and Schlumberger has 5,300, up from 3,100 a decade ago.
Wal-Mart's grocery success
Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in the Houston area, and no other company is even close.
What's the big change? Groceries.
Over the years, Wal-Mart's meteoric rise as a grocer in Houston and elsewhere has fueled its growth, said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail consulting and investment banking firm in New York.
It has gone from not even being in the top 10 among the area's largest grocers in 1999 to the No. 2 spot with nearly 27 percent of the market, according to the Shelby Report/TradeDimensions International survey.
Kroger remains atop the list with 28.5 percent of the market.
However, the popularity of low prices and giant stores tell only one side of the story. Houston has grown over the past decade, and Wal-Mart has followed the new rooftops.
Wal-Mart always carried consumables like sodas, cookies, bread and household chemicals like laundry detergent because the company believed that drove traffic, Davidowitz said.
Wal-Mart has expanded that concept with its giant Supercenters, which combine general merchandise with produce, meat and other groceries. That model has made Wal-Mart the nation's largest grocer, he said.
Mothers especially like the fact that they don't have to take their kids from store to store, said Dan Fogleman, spokesman for Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Ark.
A decade ago, Wal-Mart had 35 discount stores in the Houston area and 11 Sam's Club stores. Today Wal-Mart has seven of its traditional discount stores, 47 Supercenters, eight Neighborhood Markets and 18 Sam's Club stores.
H-E-B Grocery Co., which entered the market during the 1990s, has quickly moved into the No. 3 spot on the list of Houston-area grocers, according to the Shelby report.
Over the past decade, H-E-B has tripled the number of its employees in Houston, and Scott McClelland, president of H-E-B Houston, attributes the jump to the company's decision in 2000 to build larger stores in Houston rather than focus on neighborhood pantries.
The pantries are convenient, but don't offer everything customers want, he said.
In the past year it has shown its customer focus with a store in Pasadena called Mi Tienda. This location was designed to serve the large Hispanic population with an unusually wide range of specialty items, including menudo and corn ground on-site for tortillas.
"If you tried to sell menudo in Katy it would rot, because no one would know what it is," McClelland said. |