When Casey Loyd was looking to expand his spa-manufacturing business three years ago, several other states aggressively courted him to leave Southern California, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The offers were tempting, but the Southland’s ample supply of skilled labor and his own fondness for the area led Loyd to keep Cal Spas in Pomona.

“If I was a bean counter and I was in a publicly traded company, I probably would have gone,” said Loyd, the company’s president. “But being a family-owned business and privately held and having [community] values intact were the reasons we’re still here.”

Loyd’s decision was good news not only for Cal Spas’ 600 employees but for Southern California itself.

Although companies such as his are easy to overlook, manufacturing plays a crucial role in Southern California’s economy.

There are 808,000 factory jobs in the five-county Southern California region, making up a bit more than 11% of the region’s total employment, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

Defying the assembly-line image, the region’s manufacturers are primarily small businesses with the potential to grow. More than two-thirds of all manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles County are at companies with fewer than 250 employees, according to the county economic group.

Taken by itself, Southern California’s manufacturing base would rank third among states, after California as a whole and Texas. Los Angeles County is the nation’s largest manufacturing center, with 462,300 jobs, topping Chicago by more than 72,000.

Manufacturing generally churns out well-paid middle-class jobs with good benefits, especially in Southern California, which often tends to have higher-skilled positions, experts say. The top sector in Los Angeles County, for example, is computers and electronic products, the economic group said.

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