special promotional section
Making it
Work
Employers are finding fewer hurdles and more employees
in Lincoln, Rocklin and Roseville
by Graham Womack photo by Mike Graff
S
acramento has long been consid-
ered a core for employment op-
portunities in the region, drawing
commuters daily from the surrounding
suburbs into the city. That was part of a
mid-20th century philosophy of land-use
planning that people would be willing
to drive greater distances to work in ex-
change for large homes, good schools and
safe communities for their families.
In recent years, however, this trend
has started to shift.
While many residents still commute
from southern parts of Placer County into
Sacramento every day, Placer Valley —
the cities of Lincoln, Rocklin and Roseville
— has also become a major employment
hub, attracting a range of companies and
sectors.
The employment landscape
Chris Burnley needed people. His Hay-
ward-based company, Corefact, which
markets automation software to the real
estate industry, was struggling to find
employees in the Bay Area. “It’s too ex-
pensive. Nobody can afford to live (in the
Bay Area) anymore,” he says. So when his
company was ready to expand, it added
an office in Roseville in 2018.
A 2017 report by Beacon Economics
found that Placer Valley is home to rough-
ly 90 percent of Placer County residents
and about 80 percent of its jobs, with
total employment in the area at the time
pegged at 121,000 jobs. Most of South
Placer’s businesses at that point were
small, with the report noting that around
3,400 of the nearly 3,800 establishments
in the area employed fewer than 50
people.
“The backbone of our economy are
small businesses,” says Sherri Conway,
Placer County’s economic development
director.
There are also major employers in
each city. In Roseville — where there
are 89,492 jobs, with a median house-
hold income of $84,900 — the largest
private-sector employers are Kaiser Per-
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