Historically, the Tri-City economy fluctuates with the vagaries of Hanford contracts. It's an assumed fact of life in the Mid-Columbia that the best jobs and wages are with government contractors on the federal nuclear reservation.

But recent rounds of layoffs at Fluor Hanford and Bechtel National have cleared the way for a different major employer.

Battelle Memorial Institute, which has operated the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland for 40 years, is the new No. 1 employer in the Tri-Cities, according to figures collected by the Tri-City Industrial Development Council.

The freshest numbers show 4,200 people draw a paycheck from Battelle's Richland operation. That was 500 more than Fluor Hanford and 800 ahead of Bechtel National in TRIDEC's October numbers.

The region's next largest employers were ConAgra/Lamb-Weston at 1,800 and Tyson Fresh Meats at 1,450 - both food industry companies.

Battelle not only has the most employees but also some of the highest paid, with nearly 70 percent of its workers being researchers and scientists.

Greg Koller, spokesman for the Richland lab, said employment has grown steadily in recent years, up about 400 employees, or 9 percent, since 2002 when there were 3,823 people on Battelle's payroll in Washington. Approximately380 employees work at sites elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, such as a marine lab in Sequim, and offices in Seattle and Portland, and a few in Washington, D.C., Koller said.

PNNL's employment mix shows 38 percent women and 62 percent men. There is a constantly changing group of student employees, numbering just under 300, and a large group of foreign nationals from 42 countries working at the Richland lab. Koller said the largest contingent represent China and India, but there also are researchers from Europe and the United Kingdom, Caribbean nations, Southeast Asia and South America.

"The international and scientific people are attracted to PNNL," said Paula Linnen, human resources director at the lab. Its Foreign National Support Office helps recruit people, she said, noting that a few years ago the number of foreign national researchers was 200.

Battelle's operation at PNNL is at an all-time high, but just barely.

The lab previously peaked at 4,111 in 1992, but then came years of shrinking federal funding that saw employment numbers slip until a 1998 turnaround. PNNL's annual employee growth since then has averaged 4.5 percent.

Doug Ray, chief research officer and deputy director at PNNL, said job growth picked up after Sept. 11, 2001. The following year saw a 7 percent increase in staff.

"9/11 had a huge impact. That event transformed the way people thought about security," Ray said. Not surprisingly, the emphasis on homeland and national security has driven the growth.

"This lab's capabilities are pretty well aligned with what the nation needs to protect itself," Ray said.

The 2005 fiscal year saw PNNL delivering 14 percent more over the previous year in research volume, Ray said. "That's because we can be really responsible to needs for homeland security," he explained.

At least for the near term, Ray expects continued needs in national and homeland security will maintain the growth. "The homeland and national security portfolio is our largest component right now," he said.

One reason the lab attracts and keeps quality employees is that people just like being there.

"They always say the quality of people is what they like best," Linnen said.

PNNL's employee attrition rate is lower than most research labs, she said, and the annual turnover rate is 4 percent to 5 percent, which includes retirements. That's good, she noted.

Another draw is that PNNL has a unique arrangement with the Department of Energy that allows researchers to do private-sector work.

"It gives our staff opportunity to do work they otherwise wouldn't be able to do and that is an attraction for some of our staff," Ray said. At PNNL, that accounts for approximately 400 to 500 jobs.

While homeland and national security are the main menu of what the Richland lab does now, the mix of research in other areas is stable, ensuring there will be plenty of employment for years to come.

And there's another reason to believe PNNL will remain the Tri-Cities' No. 1 employer - energy.

Ray said the lab is working hard on science and technology to help the nation reduce dependence on foreign oil. "The real challenge is to discover the technology to make the most of coal and biomass," he said.

"There's really important work that can't be done anywhere else ...," Ray said. "The opportunities for this lab to make contributions for the good of the world is essentially boundless."