03/28/2024

California’s Economic Growth Outpaces Job Gains

Economic growth in the Golden State from 1990 to 2011 outpaced job growth, University of California, Irvine professor David Neumark and PhD candidate Jennifer Muz showed in the study, published in the latest edition of the San Francisco Fed’s Economic Letter.

“Evidence suggests that the reason California has experienced faster economic growth than job growth is that employment has shifted to high-wage industries,” the researchers found.

That shift may also have affected the overall distribution of wealth, apparently to the detriment to the poor, they found.

California’s poverty rate, adjusted for the high cost of housing, grew more than 5 percentage points from 1990 to 2011, faster than all but two other states. The increase is consistent with a relative decline in lower-skilled jobs, the researchers said.

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