No more talk, talk, talk!

JULY 16, 2010

First the awful news. But don’t worry – we’ll get to the ugly stuff later…

That’s right, folks: the state Employment Development Department has put out its latest monthly jobs report, and the unemployment situation – as you’re probably aware – is bad. Let’s just say that if the state’s latest jobless numbers were a movie (a metaphor with which our governor is somewhat aware), it would land somewhere between Ishtar and that footage of the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse that they use to scare first year engineering students.

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom. The unemployment figure has actually improved over last month – it’s gone all the way from 12.4 percent in May to 12.3 percent in June. Woohoo!

Then again, the national unemployment rate is 9.5 percent. And a year ago, California’s jobless rate was 11.6 percent. And don’t even get me started on what it was five years ago (5.3 percent?!?! That can’t be right…).

Seriously, these jobless numbers are really bad. In the last year, every sector across the state has seen job losses except for “professional and business services” (0.3 percent gain) and “educational and health services (1.3 percent gain). There’s been a 12.2 percent falloff in construction jobs, a 2.2 percent drop in financial services and another 2.2 percent drop in manufacturing. Even government (!) is down 0.5 percent from June 2009.

But have no fear! Our elected officials – and those who would very much like to be our elected officials – are on the move. They’re going to fix this right away. Fast!

To show you that they’re on the case, I turned to the good people at Lexis Nexis and did a search of every California-related news article in the last three months that included the phrase “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Turns out some pretty powerful people, from the lowly mayor of Campbell to the lowlier governor of California, have our backs. Or at least, they say that they have our backs…

On May 24, Evan Low, the mayor of Campbell — a San Jose suburb of roughly 39,000 – asked a rhetorical question in the San Jose Mercury News. “What’s the No. 1 thing on everybody’s mind?” he asked. “It’s jobs, jobs, jobs and improving the economy to help local businesses.”

Three days later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, as this previous CalWatchdog blog post shows, is no stranger to the “jobs, jobs, jobs” cliche) flew down to Universal Studios, to cheer the reopening of the portion of the famed movie studio that burned down two years ago. “This is a great time for job creation,” the star of Kindergarten Cop and Junior told the crowd. “It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Then on the first day of June, newly minted Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado dropped by Humboldt State University to talk about job creation. According to the June 2 Eureka Times Standard, Maldonado said he was focused on three things: “jobs, jobs and jobs.”

A week later, Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer talked with the Los Angeles Times about how Republican opponent/former HP exec Carly Fiorina wouldn’t do much for the state’s job situation. “The biggest contrast will be jobs, jobs, jobs – and what she did when she had a chance,” Boxer said. “When she had her chance to really help workers, she stepped all over them.”

When she had a chance.

Yes, Fiorina is generally considered one of the worst CEOs of the 20th century. But every single one of the officials cited above has been in government for years (from four years in Low’s case to more than three decades for Boxer). That’s more than enough time for them to have done something, anything, more than talk about jobs, jobs, jobs.

-Anthony Pignataro