California Unemployment Rate Climbs

Los Angeles -- As the nation continues to undergo economic recession, California emerges as one of the top in unemployment rate increase. As of July 2009, the current unemployment rate in California is 11.9% that marks an increase from 11.6% reported in June. Compared to 7.3 percent at the same time last year, California's economy has taken drastic hit since the housing crisis and other market collapsed during the Bush Administration.

According to the Department of Labor, a total of about 87,000 Californians lost their job in July. Most of the joblessness comes from jobs in transportation, utilities, and trade. As gas prices had fallen compared to last summer, it is clear but ironic that less people are taking public transportation or even traveling long distance where services of the transportation industry is greatly needed. One would expect more people to travel and enjoy their ride given the cheaper gas prices, but that is not the case.

Gas prices may be lower, but where is the money to spend on those traveling and other outings?

In the trade sector, for the same reason, people are just not spending much money buying things. It looks like Californians (and Americans in general) are finally learning to save their money for rainy days. A report on Money 101 with Bob McCormick of knx1070 news radio reported that more people are saving their money than did prior to the economic downturn. While it is a good thing to save, keeping money in banks does not revive the economy where money needs to change hands in order for the system to thrive.

For utilities, more people are opting to use less power and to go out enjoying free public amenities. The desires to cutback and save prompt people to make changes that also appear to be affecting the rate of our jobless numbers. The other day I took my kids to get books from our local library and guess what? The place was packed. It was hot outside and people rather go to public places and enjoy free services as well as free air conditioning rather than stay home and raise their air conditioning bill.

While the 11.9% is a record high for California since the keeping of such records, there're even some counties within the state that boast higher unemployment rates. Imperial County, with a workforce of about 77,000, has a jobless rate of 30.2 percent. That is way too high. Yuba County, with about 29,300 workforces, has an unemployment rate of 18.4% with 5400 people unemployed. Los Angeles County is at 12.5% with nearly 623,000 people out of work. While some counties have higher percentage rate than Los Angeles, Los Angeles has the highest number of people out of work.

This is really saddening given that the federal government appears to be trying different things to get the economy rolling. The cash for clunkers was a success for the auto industry, which saw significant number of vehicles sold due to government assistance to buyers. But it appears not to be enough to get the unemployment rate down in California and other states.

Instead, there are 15 states along with California and the District of Columbia where unemployment average is over 10 percent. 26 states saw a rise in their unemployment in July, even though the overall average dropped from 9.5 to 9.4 for those 26 states.

Let's hope that this is the bottom of the pit. Although Wall Street seems to be doing well, as all major markets are up today (the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up today 155.91 to a high of 9506, it seems to be taking time to translate into employment. Even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reports that the economy is now in recovery. We hope that this once again will translate to jobs for people all over the nation, but specifically to the thousands in California who have had their source of livelihood taken.

Sources:

http://www.edd.ca.gov/About_EDD/pdf/urate200908.pdf