California jobs picture still as dismal as bottom of recession

Richard Rider, Chairman, San Diego Tax Fighters

13 years ago

What’s driving the unemployment rates down? Is the economy really booming?

More important for us Golden State residents, why is California still doing so poorly compared to the other states?

Here are some answers.
http://riderrants.blogspot.com/2012/10/california-jobs-picture-still-as-dismal.html

There are four factors suggested for our nation’s relatively improving unemployment figures.

1. More private sector hiring.

2. More of the “unemployed” dropping out of the labor market — they no longer count as unemployed.

3. More companies making full-time jobs into part-time jobs — to reduce the costs of ObamaCare and other benefit expenses. It spreads the work around — and gives the illusion of improving unemployment.

4. A federal effort to cook the books by encouraging false responses to the monthly unemployment sample questionnaires.

I don’t think the last one is significant or even true. I’m not a believer in big conspiracies — someone always tattles. I guess we’ll find out after the election — as cooked books on this scale cannot be maintained. If it IS a conspiracy by Obama bureaucrats, we will see an impressive “unexpected adjustment” upward in unemployment rates in December or January.

As for the others, I would rank “2” and “3” ahead of “1” in importance, but it’s hard to say.

But here’s what’s being missed in California. Our state, like the nation, is experiencing a real or not-so-real adjustment in unemployment rates. But our RELATIVE unemployment rate compared to the other states remains just as high as at the height of the recession.

From my updated California fact sheet:

CA has the 3^rd highest state unemployment rate. (September, 2012) – 10.2%. National unemployment rate is 7.8%. National unemployment rate not including CA is only 7.5%, making the CA unemployment rate 36.5% higher than the average of the other 49 states.

http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

What most of us forget is that just a few years ago our unemployment rate was only slightly higher than that national average. In 2006 the national unemployment rate was 4.7% — the CA rate was 4.9%.But since the recession started, we’ve plunged FAR deeper than the national average. More important, during this recovery, the disparity has remained constant. Our California unemployment rate is over 35% higher than the other 49 states, and has been for the last 3 years — even as overall unemployment rates have been trending downward. We are not closing the gap with other states — even a little.

http://www.davemanuel.com/historical-unemployment-rates-in-the-united-states.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_unemployment_statistics

Here’s the most interesting figures from our latest “improvement” in California. In the last month, our state’s unemployment rate PLUNGED four tenths of a percent. Impressive!

Well, not so much.In our state of over 37,700,000 people, last month only 8,500 net new job were created. That’s pathetic. Obviously California’s unemployment rate improvement has little to do with an improving economy. No way that rate will employ our young and our students entering the California job market.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-jobs-20121020,0,3526303.story