California adds just 5,500 jobs in November; unemployment rate declines to 5.7%

California employers added just 5,500 jobs in November, according to federal data — a significant slowdown from more robust monthly gains earlier in the year.

But the state unemployment rate continued its five-year-long decline, dropping to 5.7% in November, the lowest in eight years. The U.S. unemployment rate is 5%.

November's tepid job increases were the lowest one-month jump in more than four years, and far less than the 40,600 job gains the state posted in October.

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But economists cautioned against reading too much into monthly swings in the employment data, which often are subject to revisions. September's numbers, for example, were revised upward from 8,200 positions to 21,100 jobs.

“We're reading the economy on the fly,” said Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “That's just the nature of these economic statistics.”

Despite the lackluster November, California's payroll employment grew 2.6% over last year, faster than all but six other states and better than the national rate of 1.9%.

Construction continued to be the leading growth sector, as the industry continues to rebound from the housing crash. The high-paying professional and technical services industry — including lawyers, accountants, architects and engineers — also recorded some of the fastest job growth in the state.

The only industries to post losses were mining and logging, along with manufacturing and financial services.

The state unemployment rate is down significantly from a year ago, when it stood at 7.2%. The jobless rate is often criticized as an incomplete economic indicator because it doesn't count discouraged job seekers who have dropped out of the labor force.

Some of those who stopped seeking employment may be returning to the labor force, which has expanded over the last year even as unemployment fell. That suggests newly returned job seekers may be finding success.

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Economists say job growth tends to taper off as an economic expansion progresses. The U.S. is technically in the seventh year of expansion.

Although California's economic growth has outperformed the nation, there are still reasons for many people to believe their fortunes have not improved.

The gap between high and low earners is more pronounced in California because wages for middle-income earners have fallen.

Since 2006, median wages have declined 6.2% in California, compared with 1.9% for the U.S. overall, according to the California Budget & Policy Center.

California's economy is booming, so why is it No. 1 in poverty?

And while the share of part-time workers has declined since the depths of the Great Recession, that segment of the workforce is still larger than in the mid-2000s. About 5.9% of workers in California are considered part-time for economic reasons — meaning that they are unable to find full-time work.

That's down from 9.6% of the workforce in 2010, but still higher than when the economy last peaked in 2006.

“We don't want to miss the point that we are in one of the better times, employment-wise, in the last 40 years in California,” said Michael Bernick, a former director of the California Employment Development Department. “But at the same time, these numbers don't represent a lot of the instability: the part-time, contingent nature of the evolving labor market.”

Via Chris Kirkham, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-jobs-20151218-story.html

Inland Empire has greatest need for community college expansion, report says

A California budget proposal to increase community college enrollment with an emphasis on the neediest districts should focus on the Inland Empire, the Central Valley and Los Angeles,according to California Competes.

A new report from the Oakland-based higher education policy institute argues that these regions should receive the vast majority of a proposed $155.2 million in new funding for enrollment growth next year, which Gov. Jerry Brown has prioritized for districts with "the greatest unmet need in adequately serving their community's higher educational needs."

The report examined factors such as the number of adults without a college degree, unemployment ratesand levels of poverty in a community college district to determine where California had the greatest number of underserved students that could benefit from furthering their education.

It concluded that, of an estimated 40,000 classroom seats the new funding would support, nearly 15,000 should be created in the Inland Empire, with about 10,500 in the Central Valley and more than 9,000 in Los Angeles. The report also suggested about 2,300 new seats in greater Sacramento.

"There are definitely areas in the state where enrolling the needy population is not easy," California Competes executive director Robert Shireman said on a conference call.

Community colleges must figure out what additional programs and courses would attract and most benefit those students, he added. "Those decisions determine whether a needy student is really served and whether they are served well."

The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office condemned the report's conclusions, saying it would deny community college access in other parts of the state.

"California community colleges were forced to turn away 500,000 students from every corner of the state during the economic downturn," spokesman Paul Feist said in a statement. "To continue rationing education in some parts of the state but not others would not be equitable and would harm California's ability to increase the number of college educated workers that our economy is demanding."

PHOTO: Eduardo Ramos, center, has his photo id picture taken on the first day of school at Los Rios Community College District expansion in Elk Grove on August 26, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Hector Amezcua

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/04/inland-empire-has-greatest-need-for-community-college-expansion-report-says.html

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Democrats Will Try Long-Shot Maneuver To Bring Back Unemployment Benefits

WASHINGTON -- Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will try to restore long-term unemployment insurance to 2 million workers using a rare parliamentary maneuver on Wednesday.

The procedural move, called a discharge petition, requires a majority of House members to sign on in support of discharging a bill from committee that has otherwise stalled. Democrats were unable to hit the threshold needed -- 218 votes -- for another recent discharge petition on minimum wage legislation, so it's unlikely they'll succeed with unemployment benefits.
But Democrats hope merely raising the issue puts pressure on Republicans.

"If my colleagues want to vote against the extension, I respect their right to disagree; but failing to even allow a vote goes against the very progress that families and our constituents demand," said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), who will file the petition. "Partisan politics must not be allowed to get in the way of doing the right thing for our middle class families. That’s why I'll be filing a measure to end the gridlock and force a vote on extending unemployment insurance."

Discharge petitions are one of the few tools at the minority party's disposal to push the majority party to hold votes on items it doesn't want to advance. The majority party in the House, currently the Republicans, generally won't bring up a bill for a vote unless it has support from the majority of the chamber, or often the majority of the party's own members. 

That means that bills like the unemployment insurance measure from Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), which is currently going nowhere in the House Ways and Means Committee, don't make it to the floor to be either voted through or voted down.

Levin's legislation would reauthorize federal unemployment insurance until the end of the year. The benefits, which kick in for workers who use up six months of state compensation, lapsed at the end of December for 1.3 million workers. Since then another 700,000 workers have exhausted their state benefits and been left hanging. Under the legislation they would all receive lump-sum payments for benefits they've missed so far.

Nearly 4 million workers have been jobless six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The average jobless spell in February had lasted about nine months.

House Republican leaders have said they're not very interested in an unemployment insurance bill if it doesn't come with any GOP-friendly provisions. And they're happy to let the Democratic-controlled Senate make the first move, something the Senate has been unable to do.

"The Speaker has said repeatedly that if Senate Democrats can produce an extension of temporary emergency unemployment benefits that is not only paid-for, but also does something to actually create jobs, he will be happy to discuss it," Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an email last week.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated reauthorizing the unemployment insurance would add 200,000 jobs to the economy, but Republicans have ignored or dismissed the CBO's findings on unemployment benefits and jobs.

In addition to the discharge petition Democrats filed last month to raise the minimum wage, they are expected to soon make the same move on comprehensive immigration reform.

Discharge petitions rarely get the 218 votes needed to force a vote on the House floor. Since 1931, when the maneuver took its current form, 563 discharge petitions have been filed but only 47 received 218 signatures, according to the Congressional Research Service. Over the past 30 years, seven petitions have made it to the signature threshold, and all of them received floor votes.

But even if they don't expect to get 218 signatures, proponents argue that circulating discharge petitions can up the pressure. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said as much last week when talking about plans to file a discharge petition for a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

"We'll never get the 218 on the [immigration] discharge petition ... because the Republicans will generally not sign," she said in an interview on SiriusXM. "But the fact that it is there and the outside mobilization is saying, 'All we want is a vote' -- either sign the petition, which enables us to get a vote, or urge the speaker to give us a vote."


PHOTO: On Wednesday March 12, 2014, Nancy Pelosi of California told reporters , she and dozens of her party members prepared to file a discharge petition in the House, aimed at forcing a House vote on an unemployment insurance extension. The Huffington Post/Jennifer Bendery


via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/unemployment-benefits_n_4936840.html?utm_hp_ref=unemployment

Inland Empire’s jobless rate lowest since 2008

The Inland Empire’s unemployment rate dropped to its lowest in more than five years in December to 8.9 percent, reflecting gains in retail and warehousing and raising hopes that the region’s economy is revving up again after years of bad news.

The last time the Inland Empire’s unemployment rate was at 8.9 percent was July 2008, said Michael Goss, spokesman on labor force and industry employment data for the state Employment Development Department, which released the numbers on Friday.

In the last year alone, between December 2012 and December 2013, the unemployment rate for the area encompassing San Bernardino and Riverside counties dropped from 11 percent, with total nonfarm employment increasing by 14,000 jobs and agricultural employment falling by 300 jobs. The trade, transportation and utilities sector posted the largest overall gain with the addition of 9,100 jobs, with nearly 62 percent of that growth in the retail trade.

In the region, the better jobs numbers were raising some eyebrows, and some hopes.

In Fontana, California Steel has seen steady job growth since 2010, said Brett Guge, executive vice president of finance and administration.

“We continue to gradually build up from where we were during the recession,” Guge said Friday. “We have roughly 960 permanent (employees) and another 100 contractors and temporary employees.”

The steel plant had been operating with 800-plus employees during the recession. The initial job loss was attributed mainly to attrition, and when the recession hit those vacant positions were not filled. In 2009, the company began filling those positions again, Guge said.

Now, California Steel has several job openings at any given time and the company is always looking for skilled mechanical and electrical technicians, Guge said.

“Since 2009, each year has been a little bit better than the past. We’re still not quite back to the production levels we were prior to the recession, but we’re closer,” Guge said.

In San Bernardino, business owner Pang Vithean spoke about the future with optimism.

Vithean, owner of The Flaming Grill, opened his small eatery in December in downtown, anticipating a continuing economic recovery and demand from workers at the new courthouse building to open nearby later this year.

“We expect it to improve and to grow, and hope it will grow,” Vithean said of the local economy.

Though economic recovery has been slow and marginal, Vithean remains optimistic that jobs will continue opening up for people.

“People still don’t have a lot of jobs, but we believe it’s getting better,” he said.

Since opening shop, Vithean has hired one employee at his San Bernardino restaurant, and he has hopes to hire more when the new courthouse opens down the street.

For every 50 customers each day, Vithean hopes to add two or three employees over the next several months.

Vithean’s employee, Lina Chea, said she was hired at Flaming Grill after a year without a full-time job and with a family to support.

“It was so hard for me,” she said.

Vithean wasn’t the only who has some hiring optimism. So does Amazon, which opened its giant distribution center in 2012 in San Bernardino.

Amazon expects to continue hiring this year, and recently announced plans to open a distribution center in Moreno Valley, where more than 1,000 full-time jobs will be created, Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman said in an email Friday.

The doubling of jobs at the Amazon distribution center (700 to 1,400), from the time it opened for operations in October 2012 to the time of its grand opening in October 2013, factored into the region’s warehouse sector growth. Transportation, warehousing and utilities increased by 2,000 jobs, with an additional 1,500 jobs in the wholesale trade, according to latest Employment Development Department statistics.

While Amazon doesn’t specifically track where its employees come from, most are from the Inland Empire, Jackie Underberg, Amazon’s general manager, told this newspaper.

Broken down by county, San Bernardino County’s unemployment rate was at 8.7 percent as of December 2013, and Riverside County’s was 9.1 percent.

The data is in line with San Bernardino County figures, which show that the county’s labor force increased by 3,000 workers from July 2011 to the present, said Kelly Reenders, administrator of the county Economic Development Agency.

She said the county continues to see new businesses breaking ground and existing businesses expanding.

The Inland Empire was one of the hardest hit regions in the nation during the Great Recession, hitting a peak 14.6 percent unemployment rate in early 2010.

The data also mirror some better numbers statewide.

The EDD estimates that 17 million California residents had jobs in December, up 24,000 from November and 291,000 from December 2012.

But the jobs numbers might actually be better than what the EDD reports. The unemployment rate is derived from a federal survey of 5,500 California households while job growth is based on a survey of 42,000 businesses around the state.

Some economists note that the monthly EDD report does not capture what is actually going on in the economy and that stronger growth is reflected in quarterly data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state’s annual revision to the jobs data will be done later this year.

And that has some taking the news with a grain of salt.

“Initially it sounds like good news, but we have to be cautious,” said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, which works with the region’s largest businesses and educational institutions to improve the area’s business climate and quality of life.

He said the unemployment figures are based on a survey of residents that may not accurately reflect the number of people who are actually unemployed, given the way the questions are framed in the survey.

“It may look like it’s great news, but the reality is there are still a lot of people who still do not have jobs,” Granillo said.

Staff Writer Gregory J. Wilcox contributed to this story.

via: http://www.sbsun.com/business/20140124/inland-empires-jobless-rate-lowest-since-2008

Jerry Brown calls for federal unemployment funding extension

With Congress apparently close to a budget agreement that does not include an extension of federal unemployment insurance benefits, Gov. Jerry Brown urged House and Senate leaders to reconsider.

"When these benefits were first authorized, the national unemployment rate was only 5.6 percent," Brown said in a letter Thursday. "The national rate is still 7 percent and 36 states, including California, have even higher unemployment rates than when the extension benefits were originally authorized."

Brown's letter comes as the Senate prepares to act this week on a bill that would avert a government shutdown next year. The bill does not include an extension of unemployment benefits scheduled to expire at the end of the month, frustrating many Democrats.

Brown said more than 214,000 Californians are currently collecting federal unemployment extension benefits and that they "will suffer irreparable harm if these federal benefits are allowed to expire."

Brown also complained more broadly about what he called "the severe federal underfunding" of California's unemployment insurance program, where mistakes in a computer upgrade delayed benefits for thousands of unemployed Californians this fall.

"In 2013, California's federal UI administrative grant was $128 million less than what was needed to pay benefits timely and accurately," Brown wrote. "The continuous funding shortfalls result in benefit delays and prevent the state from providing timely and accurate UI services to unemployed workers suffering a financial hardship."

PHOTO: Gov. Jerry Brown speaks at an event in Oakland on Nov. 1, 2013. Associated Press/Marcio Jose Sanchez

California has nation's second highest job distress rate

California may be recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and its official unemployment rate has dropped by a third, but by another federal measure of employment distress, the state is second only to Nevada.

The alternative number, known as U-6 in economic statistical circles, includes not only unemployment — the percentage of the labor force that's jobless — but "marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers."

In other words, it represents every worker whose aspirations are being thwarted by economic conditions.

By the U-6 measure, California's employment distress rate is 18.3 percent for the 12 months ending June 30, according to a new report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California's rate is second only to Nevada's 19 percent and four percentage points higher than the national rate of 14.3 percent.

California's U-6 rate is also more than twice as high as the state's 9.1 percent rate calculated by the BLS for 2006, the last year before the housing bubble burst, plunging the state into recession.

North Dakota, which is experiencing an oil boom, has the lowest rate of 6.2 percent. Texas, with whom California is often compared, has a U-6 rate of 11.6 percent.

PHOTO: Binders full of resources at the Employment Development Department office in Sacramento on Thursday February 14, 2008. The Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/california-has-nations-second-highest-job-distress-rate.html

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California's unemployment insurance deficit shrinking slowly

Although California's once-dismal employment picture is slowly improving, the state's Unemployment Insurance Fund is not only plagued by digital glitches, but is still paying out more in benefits than employers are paying into the UIF in taxes, according to a new report from the state Department of Employment Development.

Some other revenue, including earnings on fund balances, are offsetting the shortfall, so the immense deficit in the UIF, $10.2 billion at the end of 2012, will decline fractionally to $9.7 billion by the end of this year, the EDD report predicts, then continue to decline as employment improves and insurance benefit payouts drop.

The UIF deficit has been covered by loans from the federal government, on which the state is now paying interest, and the feds have also boosted their share of employers' payroll taxes to begin repaying the debt.

The department predicts that the UIF deficit will shrink to $7 billion by the end of 2015 as unemployment drops from 1.9 million workers in 2012 to 1.3 million in 2015 and payouts decline from $6.6 billion in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2015.

Employers paid $5.4 billion into the UIF in 2012 and that is expected to increase to $6.2 billion in 2015. Additionally, the boost in federal taxes to repay the debt is expected to surpass $600 million this year and $1 billion by 2015.

The UIF pays basic benefits to unemployed workers and benefit extensions have been financed by the federal government. But due to the state's improving job picture, the 100 percent federally financed extension, which paid out $7.2 billion to jobless Californians in 2012, and $4.6 billion this year, will end on Dec. 31.

Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed changes in the unemployment insurance program to improve its ability to cope with economic downturns, but the Legislature has so far refused to act.

PHOTO: Former and current high school students attend a junior college exploration workshop sponsored by the Greater Sacramento Urban League. One of every three new high school graduates not going to college in the Sacramento region couldn't find work last year, census figures showed. The high school classes of 2009 and 2010 were about 40 percent less likely to find jobs out of school than their counterparts from three years prior. The Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench

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via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/californias-unemployment-insurance-deficit-shrinking-slowly.html

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.

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California Unemployment Rate Holds at 9.8%, Highest in U.S.

The state's jobless rate, unchanged in January for the second straight month, is tied with Rhode Island. But California is No. 2 in payroll job growth.

California's jobless rate was unchanged at 9.8% in January for the second straight month, and that lack of improvement put the Golden State in a tie with Rhode Island for the worst unemployment in the U.S.

On the other end of the spectrum, North Dakota had the lowest jobless rate, 3.3%, the government said Monday in releasing updated and revised employment data for all 50 states.

California will release its county-by-county breakdown of jobs Friday, which economists expect will reflect the slow growth that is predicted in the state for 2013.

"We are expecting growth to pick up in the latter part of the year and in 2014, and the unemployment rate to come down at that point," said Jerry Nickelsburg, a UCLA economist who writes a quarterly economic forecast on the Golden State.

These statistics, based on more complete payroll information that includes tax records, show that California and other states in the western half of the country did much better in job growth over the last 12 months than the rest of the U.S., powered by the energy sector, technology, trade with Asia and a rebounding housing market.

Texas led all states in payroll job growth from January 2012 to January 2013; it added 332,400 jobs, an increase of 3.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

California was second. Though little changed from December to January, California's payroll count grew by 286,100 positions, or 2%, over the 12-month period. (Payroll jobs exclude work by the self-employed and jobs such as unpaid family work.)

The biggest gains came in leisure and hospitality, which added 7,800 jobs; construction saw a 7,300 jump. The largest drop in jobs — 5,500 — came in the combined trade, transportation and utilities sectors. The manufacturing sector shed 2,900 positions.

Nickelsburg said California was feeling the effect of a nationwide payroll tax increase as well as a state-implemented bump in sales tax and income tax on wealthy individuals. The automatic federal budget cuts that kicked in March 1, known as sequestration, will also affect growth.

"There are a lot of things going on," he said. "It's a little hard to ferret out what is the sequester and what are the other factors."

The Northeast region lagged behind the West, hurt by its relatively greater commercial links to Europe and by consolidation in financial services. Although the Northeast had a good January — partly the result of rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy — its job tally in the month was up just 1.1% from a year earlier. New York added 90,800 jobs over the year, an increase of 1.1%.

The pace of job growth in the Midwest was higher than in the Northeast but lower than in the West. The region has benefited from sturdy gains in manufacturing, particularly in the car industry.

For the U.S. as a whole, hiring accelerated in February, with employers adding 236,000 net new jobs compared with 119,000 in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics previously reported. The national unemployment rate fell to 7.7% last month.

via LA Times

California employers add 18,200 jobs in March

State employers add jobs for the eighth straight month, but the unemployment rate rises slightly to 11% as more idled workers start job hunting again. 

California's labor market continued its slow improvement in March as employers added jobs for the eighth straight month.

Payrolls grew by 18,200 jobs last month, according to figures released Friday by the California Employment Development Department. That's on top of a revised gain of 38,600 jobs in February.

via LA Times

No end in sight for mass unemployment in California

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.

By Julian Quinn 23 April 2012