One area showing considerable strength, he said, is the 2,500-building industrial sector, “where the vacancy rate is only 2.6% and the average annual rent is $6.48 NNN per square foot.” Another bullish factor, he said, is the profile of the downtown employee—“an individual with a media age of 38 and a median salary of more than $88,000 per year—which augurs well for the restaurant and retail category.”

Also addressing the Downtown Breakfast Club at its annual outlook program was Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist of the LAEDC’s Kyser Center for Economic Research, who said that despite its current real estate woes, the economic outlook for Los Angeles County calls for “slow growth” in 2012—unless there is a serendipitous increase in consumer activity.

Kleinhenz said education, information, retail trade, scientific and technical services, administrative and support services and healthcare and social assistance were the leading job gainers over the past year—even though those gains were minor. Significantly, he said, motion picture and sound recording jobs held steady, accounting for 137,777 workers—almost the same number compared to July, 2008, a high point in the industry.

Manufacturing jobs slipped 1% but, interestingly, the L.A. CBD, which has lost about half of its jobs in the past decade, remains the nation’s leading manufacturing zone. County (including City of Los Angeles) jobs, wholesale trade, transportation, warehousing and utilities and finance and insurance all lost 1% to 2% of their workers in the past year, while leisure and hospitality slipped only 0.1%, Kleinhenz explained. Running counter to the national trend, he noted, more than 7% of the county’s unemployed were college graduates compared to only 4% nationally.