03/29/2024

Though Valley economy seems healthy, some jobs lost in the Great Recession are still gone

In 2007, more people in Fresno County had jobs than at any previous point in the county’s history. The central San Joaquin Valley’s economy was relatively healthy, and the county’s annual unemployment rate was 8.6 percent – higher than the state average but the third-lowest measurement of any year since 1990.

But there were harbingers of an economic storm that would batter the region. A year earlier, the unemployment rate was only 8 percent. The construction industry, confronted by the bursting bubble of the housing market, was starting to hemorrhage jobs. In manufacturing, employment in the production of durable goods was already well below its peak levels of 2000.

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was not kind to Fresno County and the Valley. In the span of three years, more than 32,000 jobs were shed across Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties. And even now, 10 years since the start of the recession, full-year figures from the state Employment Development Department for 2017 reveal that some industries have yet to fully recover all of the jobs that were lost.

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