Tesla — between its Megapack factory in Lathrop and its electric vehicle assembly plant in Fremont — is the second largest employer of San Joaquin County residents.

That is even after the company Elon Musk built laid off 14,000 employees, or 10 percent of its worldwide workforce in May.

The Lathrop Tesla facility reported a peak employment of 3,600 workers before the cutbacks.

But that isn’t all of the economic impact that the 12th largest company in the United States by market capitalization of $802 billion as of July 1 has on San Joaquin County.

A large share of the nearly 20,000 workers at the Fremont Tesla assembly plant reside in the county

A fleet of buses each day stop in Manteca to take workers to — and bring them home from — the factory in Fremont 55 miles away.

There are now 11 Amazon distribution facilities in the county, including two in Manteca. It represents a $9 billion and counting investment in San Joaquin County by Amazon.

Today, Amazon is the No. 1 private sector employer in San Joaquin County with more than 13,000 workers.

Amazon, as of July 1, was the fifth largest United States firm in terms of market capitalization at $2.01 trillion.

Distribution and fulfillment centers provide jobs to 17 percent of the overall workforce in San Joaquin County.

The Lathrop Megafactory is one of the largest utility-scale battery factories in North America, capable of producing 10,000 Megapack units every year, equal to 40 GWh of clean energy storage.  

The massive, truck trailer-sized battery is not used not for cars or homes, but to store excess power from the power grid and funnel that power back when it is needed most.

Megapacks store energy for the grid reliably and safely, eliminating the need for gas peaker plants and helping to avoid outages. Each unit can store over 3.9 MWh of energy or  enough energy to power an average of 3,600 homes for one hour.

Twelve years ago, there wasn’t an Amazon facility in San Joaquin County.

And the structure housing the Lathrop Megapack factory was a JC Penney distribution center.

The unemployment rate was north of 15 percent.

Today it is half that at 7.5 percent.

The gap has been closed in a large part by distribution jobs led by Amazon.

But there are also a growing number of manufacturers such as Tesla contributing to the job growth.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com