California Unemployment Rate Hovers at 12.4%

Unemployment in California is sitting pretty steady, and now sits at 12.4%. December of 2008, the unemployment rate was a 8.7%. The job market continued to be extremely weak, with 80% of the states reporting an increase in unemployment.

The biggest sectors to lose jobs over the past twelve months are:

Construction, down 16.1%
Manufacturing, down 7.7%

The unemployment [...]

Heading North – CA Unemployment Up To 12.5%; Santa Clara County 11.9%

The EDD released unemployment figures today, and the rate was up to 12.5% in October, a 20 basis point increase from September’s 12.3%. Last year, it was 8% in October signalling a 50% year-over-year increase! In raw numbers, year-over-year, we’ve shed nearly a million jobs in California alone total, nearly 700K if you look at [...]

US Unemployment Breaches 10%

Unemployment rate numbers were released, and we’re officially in double-digit territory nationwide, 10.2% to be exact. The last time we were over 10% was in 1983.

Robert Reich on Jobs

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton wrote a piece in the Huffington Post last week. The entire article can be found here, but here’s an excerpt he added after the article was written (when the job numbers came out):
This morning’s job numbers are bad enough — 263,000 more jobs lost in September, [...]

Unemployment and Deflation

A flurry of economic data was released this week. Contrary to the recovery that many are talking about, the data is heading in the opposite direction for the most part. We’re seeing some signs of stabilization in some numbers, and actual rebounds in others. Long story short though, no rebound is yet consistent enough to [...]

Q3 2009 Update: Silicon Valley Rents, Vacancy Rate, and Unemployment Numbers

It’s been about two quarters since we last updated our chart for Silicon Valley office rents, vacancy rates, and unemployment. The latest numbers indicate what we anticipated, and that is unemployment numbers would continue to have a significant impact on rents and vacancy rates. What’s more is that the unemployment numbers continue to be at [...]

California Unemployment Up To 12.2%

Unemployment numbers are out for California from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they are not looking good. California’s unemployment rate is up to 12.2% (August), a brutal number and a record level. The rate is up 30 basis points from July. Year-over-year, the rate is up 460 basis points.
Nevada also reached a record level [...]

CBO: US Unemployment to Continue to Rise Through 2010

The congressional budget office has issued a report predicting that despite an expected turn around the economy, unempoyment would continue to rise through 2010. This does not bode well for commercial real estate.
We have previously shown the lag effect between unemployment moves and rent/vacancy. If unemployment continues to weaken in Silicon Valley as expected nationwide [...]

California Unemployment Up to 11.2%; Silicon Valley At 11% (!)

Last month we posted several pieces of data concerning unemployment in California as forecasted by the UCLA Anderson Forecast, in which they predicted that California Unemployment would peak at around 11.9% by mid-2010.
The EDD (Employment Development Department) is out with it’s March 2009 numbers, and California unemployment is already at 11.2%, up .7% from February’s 10.5%.
The [...]

United States vs. The World In Charts

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its “Chartbook of International Labor Comparisons” with updated data to March 2009. The PDF file contains helpful data on how the United States stacks up with other countries with respect to its labor force.
The release is full of interesting data, charts (hence, chartbook), and comparisons. Check it out: