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

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