Nearly two years after the
supposed end of the US recession, 10.9 percent of California’s labor
force is officially unemployed. A new study
released by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the
University of California, Berkeley documents in detail stagnant job
growth in country’s most populous state.
California added only
1,500 jobs in January and 4,000 in February. The unemployment rate has
been above 10 percent for three consecutive years, reflecting an
employment situation that is significantly worse than the poor
conditions prevailing throughout the country.
California lost 8.8
percent of all jobs during the recession that began in December 2007,
and the state has since regained only 2.2 percent back.
By
comparing data on normal population growth in the state and the
projected level of future economic growth, the study predicts when
California’s labor market will return to the level of 2007. Given a
“strong job growth scenario,” this level of employment will be attained
in 2018. In the event of a “moderate job growth scenario,” it will not
be reached until 2023.
Although this “moderate scenario” assumes
sustained job growth well above the rate since June 2009, no “poor
scenario” was included in the projection.
The “underemployment”
or real unemployment rate—including those who have given up looking for
work or who are working part-time involuntarily—has been above 20
percent for the past three years, and is far higher than the national
average. Only 56 percent of the working age population in California is
employed, down from 62.2 percent before the start of the recession.
Compounding
the slow growth in jobs are the steep cuts in government employment,
which have hit California particularly hard. More than 10,000 government
jobs were cut in February. Local governments, which employ 11.6 percent
of the state’s workforce, laid off over seven percent of their
employees between the beginning of the recession and February 2012. Also
hard-hit is the construction industry, where employment has declined
33.6 percent since the bursting of the housing bubble.
Throughout
the crisis, Democrats and Republicans have been united in cutting
government jobs. At the end of March, California’s Democratic governor
Jerry Brown unveiled a plan to consolidate state agencies, eliminating
39 California government agencies and cutting thousands of jobs in
response to the state’s multi-billion dollar budget deficit.
The
state’s educational system has been particularly affected over the past
several years, and schools have seen drastic cuts in funding. In 2010
and 2011, 41 percent of all local government job cuts were in the
education sphere.
Despite the insistence of both Democrats and
Republicans that the private sector is the only source of jobs, total
private sector growth in California has amounted to only 1.9 percent
since the end of the recession.
Further underscoring the illusory
nature of this “recovery” is the decline in household income, which has
dropped in California by 9 percent since 2007. Adjusting for inflation,
household income is the same in 2012 as 1998.
The fall in wages
is only one component of the rapidly deteriorating living conditions of
the working class. In 2010, the last year for which data is available,
6.1 million Californians, or 16 percent of the population, were living
below the official poverty line, which grossly underestimates the true
number of people facing poverty conditions.
Over the last decade,
California’s once world-renowned public education system has been
decimated by unending budget cuts. University of California tuition has
tripled in that time. On March 15, over 20,000 public educators have
received preliminary layoff notices. The budget for K-12 education will
likely be slashed later this year by $4.8 billion, barring voter
approval of higher sales and income tax through a referendum this
November. Regardless of the outcome of this vote, billions more will be
cut from welfare assistance and health care.
Amidst this catastrophic situation, California boasts some of the most striking levels of inequality in the country. A separate study
found that between 1987 and 2009, 35.5 percent of all new income went
to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, and 71.2 percent to the
wealthiest one-tenth of Californians. The incomes of these wealthy
individuals have mushroomed, while wage-earning Californians have
steadily lost ground in real purchasing power.
Conditions
in California are a grim expression of the economic and political
reality of the United States. The capitalist crisis has become the
occasion for a wholesale attack on the jobs and living conditions of the
working class, spearheaded by a government that is in the pockets of
the corporate and financial elite.
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