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CA Still Suffers Second-Worst Jobless Rate
By JOHN SEILER Buddy, can you spare a job? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported that California’s unemployment rate dropped just a bit, from 12.1 percent in August to 11.9 percent in September. But the state still is stuck at second-worst in the nation, behind Nevada’s 13.4 percent. California also remains almost 3 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. And except for Nevada, California’s nearby competitors are doing much better, with unemployment rates of 9.1 percent in Washington state, 9.6 percent in Oregon, 7.4 percent in Utah, 9.0 percent in Idaho, 9.1 percent in Arizona and 8.5 percent in Texas. California is what I call the “Sick State of the West.” Yet on Wednesday, Gov. Jerry Brown boasted of California’s jobs-creating greatness at the opening of Texas-based Dell computer’s new Research and Development facility in Santa Clara. “California is the world capital of innovation and technology, so it’s only natural that Dell has chosen Santa Clara as the home for its newest Research and Development facility,” Brown said. “This new facility will create hundreds of cutting-edge technology jobs at a time when we need them most. Dell has made a sound investment by expanding in California, and I look forward to further expansions of Dell’s presence here in the Golden State.” Dell will employ more than 1,500 workers at the new facility. The irony was obvious: a company whose headquarters is in Texas, which so often is being cited for its blockbuster jobs creation, is creating jobs in California. High-Tech California
This isn’t the “Dirty Energy” that was demonized in the ads a year ago against the proposition that would have effectively killed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which as of yesterday is being imposed with bureaucratic ferocity. In his remarks at the groundbreaking for the new Dell facility, company founder and CEO Michael Dell actually made the point why California is the place to be for this part of his firm: “We are making significant and thoughtful investments to develop and acquire industry-leading intellectual property. Silicon Valley is a center of technological innovation and we are looking to recruit from the great talent pool here for high-level jobs in network design, storage development, cloud computing and software development. The new positions we add here are part of more than 1,500 jobs we’re creating in the U.S. this year to help expand our technology solutions portfolio.” So for Dell, its business HQ is in Texas, its computer geniuses will be in Silicon Valley and its manufacturing in Asia. But what about the rest of us? What about folks who could support a family on a decent wage in a factory job? They’re still unemployed, or leaving. ‘Post-Industrial Hell’For the rest of us, California remains a “post-industrial Hell,” as it was described by Bill Watkins, executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University. By “post-industrial,” he means just what was described above: a state with a few high-paying, green high-technology jobs and service jobs — and low-paying jobs or welfare for everybody else. Dan Walters touched on that in his column today: “The Tax Foundation rates Texas, on a variety of issues, as having the nation’s 13th best business climate and California the 49th, ahead of only New York. But New York is home to 57 Fortune 500 companies, followed by 53 in California and 51 in Texas. “Let’s close with some personal observations, based on several visits to Texas, including a five-day sojourn in South Texas this month. “South Texas cities such as San Antonio and Austin do not exude recession, as do California’s cities. There are few vacant stores and retail, dining and entertainment venues are hopping. “The Texas oil industry is booming and hungry for workers. “Texas highways are wide, smoothly paved and well-maintained, in stark contrast with California’s congested and deteriorating roadways, even though our fuel taxes are nearly twice as high. “But when it comes to climate and physical beauty, Texas can’t hold a candle to California.” So there you have it. All California offers now is Silicon Valley and weather. Everything else is falling apart or leaving.
Tags: Arizona, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dan Walters, Dell, Idaho, Jerry Brown, John Seiler, Michael Dell, Nevada, Oregon, Silicon Valley, Texas, unemployment, Utah Comments(10) |
May 23, 2013
Well at least California is consistent with one thing Texas is doing and that is, both have opportunities for illegal immigrants to attend College on the backs of the taxpayer!
That’s not funny Barb, 90% of Californians are made as hell about that so called “Dream Act”, more like nightmare act.
CA has had $90 BILLION in budget deficits the last 3 years. And we have $500 billion in unfunded public pension deficits.
We have public employees earning 3 times what the average private sector worker earns. We cannot become prosperous again until we have a hard cap freeze on government spending, which means government employee compensation since 90% of government spending goes to public employee pay and benefits.
Brown is goign to try to get his 5 year mammoth tax hike on the next ballot, an there is no way it is goign to pass, and Brown has YET to put a cap on government spending.
We must cap spending, and allow JUST 3%-5% annual budget increases MAXIMUM. FREEZE all government employee pay-no raises for 5 years. Anyhtng else and we are going BK.
Sorry Rex, didn’t mean to offend! I’m just as mad about it as you are and the 90%! I’m trying to maintain some kind of sense of humor in all this madness! I attended a Republican Womens group in Simi Valley yesterday and a rep from Senator Tony Strickland’s office was there. I asked him where the senator stands on this issue. He said that the senator opposes it and voted against it. Thats pretty much all I got! I thought to myself where was the passion to fight it. Not sure coming from the rep. I do know that Assemblyman Tim Donnelly has started a referendum and the petition will be passed around at the next meeting. AB130 & AB131 is hogwash!
I agree with your cap on public spending, but if the Democrats have it their way the unsustainable spending will continue especially if the new redistricting plan remains and they get a 2/3 majority.
If we do not get a cap on spending our goose is cooked. It is that simple.
It was both dems and repugs that got us into this mess with the over the top pay and especially the 3%@50 pensions, which are IMO the biggest threat the poor and working class have ever faced.
Merrill Matthews from Forbes magazine wrote an excellent piece titled, “The Red State in your future”. A quote from this sums it up nicely:
“Many fed-up citizens in those blue states are leaving. But others have decided that if anyone is going to leave, it’s those big-spending politicians who brought on the fiscal disaster. It’s a lesson blue-state politicians better learn: It’s better to be red than dead.”
I’ve chosen to stay and help others to continue the battle against these progressives. It’s sounds like many others in CA feel the same way. It’s time to help the corrupt politicians to relocate!
From my CA vs. the Other States fact sheet:
wwwRiderBlog.NotLong.com
Consider California’s net domestic migration (migration between states). From April, 2000 through June, 2008 (8 years, 2 months) California has lost a NET1.4 million people. The cumulative net annual income lost from this 8 year out-migration comes to about $26 billion. Net departures slowed in 2008 only because people couldn’t sell their homes. In 2010 we lost “only” 72,000 net people to domestic migration. Again, note that this is NET loss.
http://www.mdp.state.md.us/msdc/Pop_estimate/Estimate_08/table5.pdf and
http://tinyurl.com/2010-CA-lost-72000 and
http://interactive.taxfoundation.org/migration/
These are not welfare kings and queens departing. They are the young, the educated, the productive, the ambitious, the wealthy (such as Tiger Woods) – and retirees seeking to make their pensions provide more bang for the buck.
Some of these departing seniors are retired state and local government employees fleeing the state that provides them with their opulent pensions – in order to avoid the high taxes that these same employees pushed so hard through their unions. And once they move out of California, our state can no longer tax their California-paid pensions.
No problem Richard, this will all get sorted out in our sovereign bankruptcy.
BTW, latest from Shadow Stats…. National unemployment at 23% using statistical methods from 1994, before the government started fudging the numbers.
If we connect the high unemployment rate to California’s obsession with “Redevelopment Job-Creation” (some of it funded with Obama-stimulus bucks) for whatever recent fiscal or calendar year we have local government spending stats for (see http://www.sco.ca.gov for the Annual Report on Community Redevelopment Agencies and check out Tables Three, Four and Seven) we can have a lot of fun. California’s tax-guzzling, community-wrecking Redevelopment Agencies (at present dead, but possibly about to rise again if the State Supreme Court waves their magic wand) claimed they created 14 thousand-odd jobs in 2008-09. Turns out each job cost taxpayers $532 thousand each. And this before the employer handed the new employee their first paycheck. It gets better. In Riverside County the average cost per Redevelopment-created job was more than $2 million. See boys and girls what fun we can have with numbers!