California Pumping Up New Jobs

Today the July 2005 UCLA Anderson Forecast for California was released and overall it looks like positive news.The report was written by Christopher Thornberg, Ph.D. and Michael Bazdarich, Ph.D., both from UCLA. Here is their summary of the latest economic data for the Golden State: "California job numbers saw a big gain in July for the second year in a row. The State added 50,000 new payroll jobs last month bringing the quarterly total up to 78,000, a very solid 2.1% growth rate. This is very similar to last year when the state experienced a similar mid-summer surge in employment. There are multiple reasons to view this report with a lot of enthusiasm. The gains came across the board from a sector by sector perspective, and primarily in the private sector. Even manufacturing saw some solid increases-the first time since last year. Only the public sector remained weak, along with transportation. It was also a good report from the fact that the gains were across the board regionally. The Bay area saw increases in employment across the board, instead of the gains being strictly from the southern and central portions of the state. Caution is in order however, since the fastest growing sector by terms of employment remains construction, largely due to the continuing real estate bubble the state is experiencing." Sounds pretty good until that last sentence. Check out my thoughts on the housing market here.