CA unemployment drops to 7.3%
by John Seiler | October 20, 2014 12:47 pm
Perhaps Gov. Jerry Brown’s campaign slogan is right: “California is back.”
Unemployment dropped to 7.3 percent in September[1], 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[2], 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 [3]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[4]. 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.
- Unemployment dropped to 7.3 percent in September: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-unemployment-september-20141017-story.html?track=rss
- sixth worst: http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
- 2013 USC study : http://gen.usc.edu/assets/001/84955.pdf
- limited extra energy development: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/21/california-fracking-bill_n_3965069.html
Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2014/10/20/ca-unemployment-drops-to-7-3/