California’s unemployment rate fell to 5 percent in February as the state’s employers added 22,900 nonfarm payroll jobs. The state Employment Development Department said Friday that last month’s rate was a drop from a revised 5.2 percent in January.
When the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy surveyed foreign exchange students studying in the U.S. in 2001, it found that they thought that American education was a cake walk compared to secondary education in their home countries. And when it conducted the survey again in 2016, it found that exchange students thought that U.S. education was even less challenging than before.
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a very low level at the end of 2016, raising the question of whether the labor market has become too tight. After applying a new method to adjust for demographic changes in the labor force, the current unemployment rate is still 0.3 to 0.4 percentage point higher than at past labor market peaks. This indicates that the labor market may not be quite as tight as the headline unemployment rate suggests.
“In January, the number of Americans quitting their jobs rose to a seasonally-adjusted total of 3.22 million, the highest number since February 2001. The quits rate rose in January to 2.2%. People quitting their jobs in droves is seen as a sign of confidence among workers, as folks are unlikely to quit a job unless they are confident they can get another one. “
The pace of job creation remained robust in February, with payrolls rising by a seasonally adjusted 235,000 new jobs, the Labor Department said.
About 2.5 million people living close to the official poverty line left California for other states from 2005 through 2015, while 1.7 million people at that income level moved in from other states – for a net loss of 800,000. During the same period, the state experienced a net gain of about 20,000 residents earning at least five times the poverty rate – or $100,000 for a family of three.
Santa Clara County lost 3,500 jobs while the Alameda County-Contra Costa County area lost 900 jobs in January compared to December, seasonally adjusted figures from the Employment Development Department show. The San Francisco-San Mateo region managed a gain of only a paltry 400 jobs.
The current job creation rate is “miserable,” said Chapman University economist Raymond Sfeir, adding that the number of Orange County residents who were employed in January was only 3,100 more than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s household survey.
“California’s job growth continued its sluggish pace in January, although the Golden State’s unemployment rate did fall a tenth of a percentage point to 5.1 percent. The state Employment Development Department’s monthly report, released Friday, said California added 9,700 jobs in January.”
L.A. County employers shed 78,700 jobs in January, fueled primarily by a steep decline in seasonal retail positions that were eliminated at the end of the holiday shopping season.. . . The Inland Empire weathered a decline of 19,900 jobs in January, a sharp contrast to the 9,600 that were added the previous month. The region’s jobless rate also shot up to 5.6 percent from 5.1 percent in December but it still landed below the year-ago rate of 5.9 percent.
“Silicon Valley’s innovation economy grew faster in 2016 than in 2015, and it outpaced all rival tech hubs. Last year, job growth in innovation industries was 8 percent in Santa Clara County; 7 percent in Austin, Texas; 4 percent in New York City; 3 percent in Boston; and 2 percent both in Seattle and Southern California, according to the report, by San Jose-based Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Mountain View-based Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Yet soaring housing prices, brutal traffic snarls and troubling education results are among the flaws that threaten to undermine the economy in Silicon Valley, the report stated.”
California will issue school and district report cards later this month, but without a key measure – whether students are prepared for college or careers.
The hiring is expected to continue through mid-April and comes as the company prepares for spring, its busiest time of the year.
The latest Federal Highway Administration data indicates that nearly 23,000 cars are handled by each freeway lane on the average day. Among the larger urban areas, only San Jose and close-by Riverside-San Bernardino have a volume of more than 20,000 daily. . . At the same time, public policy in California is calling for significant urban densification that will put an even greater strain on the roadway network. Any assumption that a more dense Los Angeles will be anything less than an even more horrific traffic environment is simply folly. . . despite the addition of a substantial urban rail system in Los Angeles County has been accompanied by a general decline in transit ridership on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority services compared to predecessor services operated by the Southern California Rapid Transit District in 1985. In 2016, ridership was even lower than the year before, despite the extensions of rail service to Santa Monica on the Expo Line and to Azusa on the Gold Line.
The study, Apples to Apples, released on Wednesday, shows charter schools and private school voucher programs doing better at educating students than public schools in Wisconsin.