April 20, 2001

IBM adds jobs; secures spot as county?s No. 1 employer

Big Blue remains Boulder County’s top private-sector employer, but a combination of layoffs by some and hirings by others created a shift among the traditional top five.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM’s operation in Gunbarrel strengthened its hold as the county’s No. 1 employer, adding 500 jobs in 2000, growing its workforce by 11 percent to 5,000 people. The computer maker has held the No. 1 spot since The Boulder County Business Report began tracking employers in 1998.

In contrast, Louisville-based Storage Technology Corp., which held the No. 2 spot since 1998, slipped to No. 3 after reducing its ranks to 3,000, cutting 450 county jobs and 1,250 companywide.

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Sun Microsystems Inc. in Broomfield takes the No. 2 spot after increasing its staff by 900 to 3,250 workers, or 38.3 percent. Another Broomfield company, Level 3 Communications Inc., increased its workforce 17.5 percent to 2,350, even though it recently cut 150 jobs. The increase moved Level 3 ahead of Boulder Community Hospital, which added 99 jobs bringing its staff to 2,102.

The fourth county-based company in the top 10 on the list of Boulder County’s Top 50 Largest Employers is Broomfield-based Ball Corp., which ranked No. 7 with 1,925 workers.

Sun added the most jobs, 900, in 2000. Sun’s Enterprise Services division, headquartered in Broomfield, has experienced tremendous growth in consulting, education and support services, said Prentiss Donahue, group manager for corporate marketing. “Enterprise Services is continuing to be one of the fastest-growing parts of the company worldwide,” he said.

The Broomfield campus soon will unveil its worldwide remote services monitoring center, full of engineers who monitor and maintain large customers’ servers. The company’s customer training organization also is growing dramatically with 250,000 student-training events per year, Donahue said.

StorageTek’s global restructuring in 2000 resulted in 1,250 fewer jobs. The cutbacks were part of an overhaul to boost net income. While revenues were down some 13 percent in fiscal year 2000 from 1999, net loss was $1.8 million in 2000. Net losses in 1999 were $74.6 million, after earning nearly $200 million in profit in 1998.

Company officials couldn’t comment specifically about StorageTek’s health because they were in a 15-day quiet period prior to the April 26 release of first-quarter earnings. “The industry we’re in is still growing at a very aggressive speed because companies’ storage needs are growing about 100 percent per year,´ said Vice President of Investor Relations Karla Kimrey. “The first half of 2000 was very painful from a turnover standpoint,” she said, adding that the company is confident it now has the leadership it needs to move forward.

Boulder County-based companies comprise 36 percent of the top 50 county employers. Foreign and California-based companies employ the most Boulder County workers not employed by county-based firms. Firms from Canada, Switzerland and The Netherlands make up 15.6 percent of non-locally based firms. California-based firms make up 21.9 percent of that group, and Texas-based companies carry 9.4 percent.

The industries holding the most workers in the county include high technology (computers, software, telecommunications, Internet, aerospace, etc.), 21 firms, 42 percent; food (grocery, nutritional supplements, restaurants), eight firms, 16 percent; biotechnology/medical products, seven firms, 14 percent; design/manufacturing, six firms, 12 percent; community services, four firms, 8 percent; and services/miscellaneous, four firms, 8 percent.

The majority of the largest employers, 34 of them, are publicly traded companies; 16 are private and two are non-profits.

New to the list this year are:

* No. 17 McLane Western, a Temple, Texas-based grocery distributor, with 650 county employees;

* No. 24 Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville, with 520 employees;

* No. 27 Canadian telecommunications firm 360Networks, with 475-plus employees;

* No. 31 Louisville-based Rock Bottom Restaurants with 400 employees;

* No. 40 Longmont-based information technology staffing firm Highland;

* No. 43 YMCA of Boulder Valley with 300 employees;

* No. 50 San Jose, Calif.-based software firm Xilinx Inc. with 275 employees at its Boulder office.

Companies had to employ at least 275 people to qualify for this year’s list.

The University of Colorado employs about 5,600 people but was not included in the list because it tracks only private-sector employers.Contact Alisha Jeter Rhines at (303) 440-4950 or e-mail research@bcbr.com

Big Blue remains Boulder County’s top private-sector employer, but a combination of layoffs by some and hirings by others created a shift among the traditional top five.

Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM’s operation in Gunbarrel strengthened its hold as the county’s No. 1 employer, adding 500 jobs in 2000, growing its workforce by 11 percent to 5,000 people. The computer maker has held the No. 1 spot since The Boulder County Business Report began tracking employers in 1998.

In contrast, Louisville-based Storage Technology Corp., which held the No. 2 spot since 1998, slipped to No. 3 after reducing its ranks to 3,000, cutting 450…

Christopher Wood
Christopher Wood is editor and publisher of BizWest, a regional business journal covering Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer and Weld counties. Wood co-founded the Northern Colorado Business Report in 1995 and served as publisher of the Boulder County Business Report until the two publications were merged to form BizWest in 2014. From 1990 to 1995, Wood served as reporter and managing editor of the Denver Business Journal. He is a Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. He has won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
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