California's employment picture: Good news and bad news

The good news is that with a recent surge of employment, California has regained virtually all of the million-plus jobs it lost during what many call the Great Recession.

The Employment Development Department reported Friday that California's unemployment rate, which hit a high of 12.4 percent in 2010, dropped to 8 percent in February. California had added 336,000 non-agricultural jobs in the previous 12 months.

The bad news is that despite regaining those lost jobs, California still has one of the nation's highest jobless rates, surpassed by only a handful of other states, and it's still well above the national average of 6.7 percent.

How can that be?

It's because over more than seven years of economic decline and recovery, California's population has grown and therefore so has its potential workforce, and the unemployment rate is the percentage of thelabor force that doesn't have jobs.

California's lowest unemployment rate in recent history was 4.8 percent for a few months in late 2006, when about 850,000 of the state's 17.8 million available workers were unemployed.

In the 7-1/2 years since then, California's labor force has grown by 800,000-plus to 18.6 million but the state has only 193,000 more people employed, leaving 640,000 more Californians without jobs than there were in 2006. Hence, with 1.5 million unemployed, the state has a much-higher unemployment rate now than it did then.

Two other factors also round out California's employment picture, and undercut somewhat the positive news of recent job gains.

One is labor force participation - the percentage of Californians of working age who either are working or seeking work. That's just 62.2 percent, the lowest rate in more than three decades, according to EDD. Were more Californians between the ages of 16 and 64 to join the labor force and seek work, the state's unemployment rate would be higher.

The second is what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calls "U-6" - the percentage of the labor force that's not only unemployed, but involuntarily working part-time or "marginally attached" to the labor force. BLS calls it "labor underutilization."

For 2013, California had the nation's second highest U-6 rate, 17.3 percent. And in Los Angeles County,which has more than a quarter of the state's population, it was 19.8 percent.

PHOTO: A group meets during a workshop for unemployed people at a community center in Corona, Calif., Aug. 7, 2012. The New York Times/Monica Almeida

Categories: California by the Numbers

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/03/californias-employment-picture-good-news-and-bad-news.html#storylink=cpy

Economist: Job growth in Inland Empire returning to normal

Businesses are hiring, and the Inland Empire is starting to see it — in the numbers anyway.

The region saw the net creation of about 46,800 new jobs in 2013 — a statistic Inland Empire economist John Husing said is a return to normalcy after the economic downturn of the past few years.

“What normally has occurred in the Inland Empire is, if you go back over the last 10 years and you look at growth, 46,000 is a slightly above-average number for us,” Husing said. “We’ve been as high as 60,000 but 46,000 is really strong. So it means that 2013 was an extraordinarily strong year, and it means that the whole economy has reached the point where it shifted gears from being struggling to starting to act more normally.”

The figure, Husing said, is based on a revision by the California Economic Development Department released on Friday. An earlier EDD estimate had net job growth in the Inland Empire for the past year at about 14,000 jobs, though the figure was presented prior to new calculations from data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Husing said.

“The conversations I’m having with people in different sectors of the Inland Empire economy are very positive,” said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. “People have been reticent to invest and to hire and I think what I’m hearing is that now is the time that things have changed and that investment is necessary for them to position themselves for the next few years.”

According to Husing’s data analysis, social assistance was a sector that made the biggest gain in job growth with about 12,000 new jobs.

“That was a rather aggressive expansion of social services last year and that makes sense given the fact that unemployment tends to be rather high,” Husing said.

The revised data also marked a strong return for the construction sector with 6,700 new jobs according to a chart provided by Husing.

“Construction has been negative for the last several years,” Husing said. “That is a definite turnaround for that sector since we’re finally seeing construction taking back its traditional role as a strength for our economy.”

In an economic report keynote earlier this year, Husing said the sectors of logistics and healthcare are major driving forces of the regional economy.

According to the latest march EDD report, looking at the past year, trade, transportation, and utilities were major growth sectors, adding 9,600 more jobs. Transportation and warehousing added 4,300 jobs, retail trade was up 3,800 jobs and wholesale trade increased by 1,700 jobs over the year, according to the EDD.

Other industries that reported job gains for the year include leisure and hospitality employment with 8,600; education and health services with 6,600 jobs; and professional and business services with 6,100 jobs, according to the EDD report.

The Southern California Association of Governments, Granillo said, expect the Inland Empire population to grow from 4.3 million to 6 million by 2035.

“The economy is on an upswing and people are making investments in the employees, and looking to, in some cases, relocate to the Inland Empire, based on the fact that our economy is situated for growth,” Granillo said. “The people I’ve been talking to lately are in the professional services sector – lawyers and accountants looking to grow their footprint in the Inland Empire or to establish companies in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.”

PHOTO: The State Economic Development Department on Friday released a jobs report for the Inland Empire - showing a surprising 46000 people were hired for new jobs - the figure is higher than an earlier report - surprising IE economist John Husing. Construction has made a strong showing in the new report.

via: http://www.sbsun.com/business/20140312/economist-job-growth-in-inland-empire-returning-to-normal

Brown official orders EDD to pay jobless claims first, check eligibility later

With thousands of Californians still waiting for unemployment checks because of a computer problem that has delayed payments for weeks, the Brownadministration on Tuesday ordered the Employment Development Department to begin paying backlogged claims for continued benefits before determining if they are eligible for payment.

Calling the backlog "unacceptable," Marty Morgenstern, secretary of the state Labor and Workforce Development Agency, told EDD Chief Deputy Director Sharon Hilliard in a memorandum that without such action "it is unlikely that the claims backlog will be reduced quickly enough to respond to the very real financial hardship now being experienced by too many of our residents relying on timely payment of their UI benefits.

Morgenstern said, "Consequently, I am directing EDD to immediately begin the process of paying backlogged claims for continued UI benefits prior to a final determination of eligibility."

Final determinations of eligibility for backlogged claims "will have to be completed later and at that time EDD will act to recover any resulting overpayments that might occur," the memo said.

Loree Levy, an EDD spokeswoman, said in an email late Tuesday night that Hilliard received Morgenstern's memo and that EDD "will begin paying all backlogged UI claims without any further delays."
She said claimants who currently have claims in the backlog will begin receiving payments as soon as Thursday.

EDD, which is upgrading its 30-year-old unemployment insurance processing system, said early last week that about 50,000 Californians had claims delayed after the department converted several years of old data into a new processing system over the Labor Day weekend. The problem quickly grew wider, however. By Friday, EDD said about 185,000 of the state's nearly 800,000 people receiving benefits had been affected, with about 80,000 backlogged claims yet to be cleared.

The department put hundreds of employees to work over the weekend, hoping to put a significant dent in the backlog. The effort was largely unsuccessful. Though EDD said it cleared about 43,000 claims from the backlog over the weekend and another 11,000 claims Monday, new claims replaced the ones EDD cleared, and the backlog of submissions older than 10 days remained about 80,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.

Morgenstern acknowledged what he said were "multiple steps" by EDD "to aggressively deal with backlogged certifications," including redirecting staff from other program areas to help process claims and increasing overtime.

However, he said such efforts are unlikely to be sufficient. He said paying backlogged claims for continued unemployment benefits before a final determination of eligibility is consistent with U.S. Department of Labor guidelines.

"It is my expectation that this payment action along with the dedication of additional staff resources will expedite the elimination of the backlog and the payment of UI benefits to those most in need in the shortest possible time," Morgenstern wrote.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/09/brown-official-orders-edd-to-pay-backlogged-claims-first-check-eligibility.html#storylink=cpy