“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.
The technology industry’s job growth in the nine-county region has dramatically decelerated, according to this newspaper’s analysis of figures released by state labor officials and Beacon Economics. Tech’s annual job growth throttled back to 3.5 percent, or 26,700 new jobs, in 2016. That’s much slower than the 6 percent annual gain of 42,300 jobs in 2015, or the 6.4 percent gain in 2014.
And while the industry’s 3.5 percent growth last year is still a sturdy annual pace, Bay Area technology companies have already disclosed plans to slash about 2,000 jobs in the first three months of 2017.
Employers added 227,000 jobs in January, the best gain since September, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly higher than last year’s average monthly gain of 187,000 jobs. . . the jobless rate—or the share of Americans in the labor force who are unemployed—rose to 4.8% from 4.7% a month earlier. More Americans came off the sidelines and actively looked for work. That helped to raise the count of unemployed but it could be a sign of increased optimism about the prospect of finding jobs.
“California unemployment fell to 5.2 percent last month, although payrolls grew by an anemic 3,700 jobs, the state reported Friday. The Employment Development Department said the statewide unemployment rate dipped by a tenth of a percentage point in December. But the addition of just 3,700 payroll jobs across the state was remarkably weak and suggests the state’s economy may be slowing down.”
A restructuring plan from PG&E to cut 450 jobs and end relationships with 800 contract workers also includes sending at least 70 of those jobs to India — with the workers who formerly performed those roles required to train their overseas replacements.
Applications for cash welfare reached their lowest point in at least six years in 2016, which economists say might indicate California’s poorest are finally feeling the effects of an improving economy.
The Brown administration is ending a program that coordinated care for seniors and low-income families because it was no longer cost effective. . . Federal regulations requiring in-home caregivers to receive overtime after 40 hours per week drove the cost of the program up with the minimum wage hike. . . Cutting the program will shift the labor costs onto the counties, which is estimated to cost more than $4.4 billion over the next six years . . . “This would be devastating to counties all over the state,” CSAC President and Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson said in a statement. “We undoubtedly would have to make cuts in other vital social services to cover these costs.”
Over the past year, the levels of quitting and hiring haven’t made any progress. Hiring plunged during the recession, but by the end of 2015 the rate had climbed to a post-recession high of 3.8%. For the past eight months, it has hovered below that rate.
“Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 156,000 in December from the prior month, a slowdown from November’s more robust gain, the Labor Department said Friday. For all of 2016, the economy added just under 2.2 million jobs, the smallest gain for a calendar year since 2011. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7% last month, but remains historically low. Wages showed new signs of firming, rising at the best annual rate since 2009, a sign that more than seven years into a slow-growing expansion labor-market conditions are finally tightening enough to reap payoffs for workers.”
California employers added 13,600 jobs in November, nudging the state unemployment rate down to 5.3%, according to data released Friday morning.
U.S. employers hired at a steady clip in November while the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in nine years, signs of enduring labor-market growth that will likely leave Federal Reserve officials on track to raise interest rates later this month.
California is on the road to a bifurcated, almost feudal, society, divided by geography, race and class. As is clear from the most recent Internal Revenue Service data, it’s not just the poor and ill-educated, as Brown apologists suggest, but, rather, primarily young families and the middle-aged, who are leaving. What will be left is a state dominated by a growing, but relatively small, upper class, many of them boomers; young singles and a massive, growing, increasingly marginalized “precariat” of low wage, often occasional, workers.
Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 161,000 in October from the prior month, following September’s upwardly revised gain of 191,000, the Labor Department said Friday. . . The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of American households, ticked down to 4.9% last month from 5% in September because the labor force shrank. The labor-force participation rate edged lower, to 62.8% in October from 62.9% the prior month, but remained elevated from its October 2015 level of 62.5% .
A federal trial court in West Virginia, in a case called Murray Energy Corporation v. EPA, recently found that EPA failed or refused to implement a statutory requirement to continuously evaluate job losses and shifts in employment caused by its regulations. The court ordered EPA to fully comply with the law. The court further found that due to the impact of its regulations on our economy, and the undisputed widespread employment effects suffered by the coal industry, it would be an abuse of discretion for EPA to refuse to conduct the job loss impacts on the coal industry resulting from its regulations.