CA unemployment drops to 7.3%

Perhaps Gov. Jerry Brown’s campaign slogan is right: “California is back.”

Unemployment dropped to 7.3 percent in September, down from 8.8 percent a year ago.

Except the national rate is 5.9 percent. So California clearly is just following the national recovery, slight as it is — albeit not as strongly. We’re still 1.4 percentage points higher than the national rate.

And California still is at sixth worst, tied with Michigan and Tennessee. We’re nowhere near North Dakota, the best state, at 2.8 percent.

Of course, they have a shale-oil boom at the Bakken Formation.

But California has the Monterey Shale deposits, which a 2013 USC study showed would, if developed, grow the state GDP could  by as much as 14 percent; with state revenues increasing by 10 percent.

Brown did sign a bill allowing limited extra energy development. But we haven’t seen much from that yet.

Beside which, state taxes and regulations remain the highest in the nation. You can’t create more jobs if you keep killing them.