It wasn't exactly a surprise when Northrop Grumman Corp. announced last week that it was shedding 750 jobs as it consolidated two Los Angeles divisions and eliminated redundant administrative and support positions.

That kind of news has become all too common in this moribund economy.

Far more eye-catching was this nugget that did not make the headlines: The same firm has about 850 openings for jobs that are highly paid with good health plans and other benefits.

While the economy has been slowing, Northrop Grumman has been growing.

The Century City-based company has a piece of several military aerospace contracts that just happen to be ramping up as business elsewhere is cooling.

"We are still out there looking for people," Jim Hart, a company spokesman, told me last week.

Northrop's story might be unusual, but it is not unique. Even in a down economy, some companies are creating jobs. They just tend to be overwhelmed by those that are cutting them.

California lost a net of nearly 500,000 jobs between January 2008 and January 2009, according to data from the state Employment Development Department.

The big losses were in construction, which lost about 130,000 jobs; trade, transportation and utilities, which eliminated 145,000 positions; and professional and business services, which lost about 77,000 jobs.

Unemployment rose from 6.1 percent a year ago to 10.1 percent this January.

Yet even amid that carnage, a few sectors added jobs. Natural resources and mining added about 600 positions. The big gainers, relatively speaking, were education and health care. Education services added 11,000 jobs while health care firms hired an additional 29,000 people.

The experience at Northrop Grumman shows how even at one company, some jobs can be created even as others are going away.

The firm consolidated two branches, one that focused on aircraft in El Segundo and another that was responsible for space technology down the road in Redondo Beach. The merger led to the elimination of hundreds of support and administrative jobs, the kind of people who work behind the scenes to keep the buildings open and the paychecks coming.

"There was a lot of duplication," Hart said.

But the company's core business – servicing the U.S. military's aerospace needs – is booming, which is ironic considering that aerospace led California's last major employment downturn in the early 1990s.

Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor on the Global Hawk, a high-flying, unmanned aircraft based at Beale Air Force Base north of Sacramento. And it builds the center of the fuselage for the Navy's FA-18 fighter jet, which has seen increasing production lately; and the brand-new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a jet that is going to be used by all branches of the military.

For those programs, the company needs hundreds of additional people, everything from engineers to project managers and contract administrators.

Northrop has had an especially hard time filling its technical positions, in part because many of those jobs require specialized knowledge and years of experience. Many of the positions also require difficult-toobtain security clearances from the government.

The down economy might actually be making it more difficult to hire those people. Most of the people who have those skills still have jobs, and many are reluctant to switch companies at a time like this.

"It's kind of hard to convince them to leave a job they've held for several years," Hart said. "Everybody is less likely to want to move around."

The company does not disclose salary levels, but the kind of high-end engineering jobs the firm is trying to fill typically pay north of $100,000 for experienced people. And the entry-level jobs are not bad, either. An engineer right out of college can expect to earn as much as $60,000 a year working in the aerospace industry. Northrop provides comprehensive medical benefits and a 401(k) retirement plan that matches money that employees set aside in an investment account.

It seems nutty when so many people are unemployed, but Northrop has had to resort to gimmicky promotion to find workers. The company has flown banners over Southern California beaches and a University of Southern California football game, placed ads on its shuttle buses, and offered cash and free dinners to potential applicants to just come by and kick the tires.

Not many firms in this economy need to go to such lengths to find qualified applicants. But in the months ahead, there will be companies hiring. The health care industry, the leading job creator over the past year, seems likely to continue to grow as baby boomers age and the demand for medical care increases. And the federal stimulus package and California's own construction plans will mean a big demand for people to build roads, schools and flood control projects.

With any luck, these industries will keep us afloat while the creative energy behind California's economy – the computer industry, biotech, the entertainment industry – regroups and prepares for the eventual turnaround. In the meantime, for better or worse, the military industrial complex is not going away any time soon.