Governor Gavin Newsom attempts to fight off the recall and prop up his “California Comeback” campaign slogan with the EDD’s latest jobs report, but there’s one major problem - he’s cherry picking the data.
When the new employment data was released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Governor Newsom immediately came out and used it as proof that California is on path to a major economic recovery.
“California is continuing to lead the nation’s economic recovery, adding 101,800 jobs in April - 38% of all the jobs created throughout the entire country. Over the past three months, California has created 390,300 jobs, but we’re not letting up... the California Comeback Plan is the biggest economic recovery package in the state’s history and will provide historic investments in small businesses and workers to bring California roaring back,” Newsom proudly reported.
A closer look at the latest job numbers paints a different picture. Newsom is cherry picking the most favorable economic indicators while ignoring others that are less positive.
Even though there are jobs that are coming back, there’s a bigger problem with the labor participation rate. Those numbers actually declined.
The California Employment Development Department released its version of the federal jobs report and said that just 38,600 more Californians were employed in April than in March. Meanwhile, 1.6 million remained unemployed. What’s worse is those abysmal numbers do not count people who have dropped out of the state’s workforce.
California’s unemployment rate of 8.3% in April remained unchanged from the March level despite the supposed surge in new jobs. In addition, it’s still considerably higher than the national jobless rate of 6.1%.
“California has the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the country,” Carl DeMaio stated. “The unemployment rate stayed at 8.3% while the labor participation rate went down. This means that there are actually more people unemployed this month than last month. In fact, if you take into account the labor participation rate, California’s adjusted unemployment rate is a staggering 14%,” DeMaio Concluded.
Listen to Carl break down the California jobs report and give you the labor participation data HERE.
**Photo Credit: Getty Images