California Has Lost 1 million+ Jobs in this Recession

For the movie buffs out there, you may remember the classic movie "Grapes of Wrath" where people who lost their jobs in the dust-bowl drying up agriculture jobs in the midwest loaded everybody up in the car to head to California---Land of jobs and opportunity---Unfortunately, there weren't plentiful opportunities once they got to the golden state.

If you look at data for our Nation's most populous state, you'll see that for the first time ever it has more than 2.2 million people out of jobs (This doesn't include the likely 1 million more who are working part-time jobs even though they want full time work). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in just a few short years the jobless ranks more than doubled from less than 1 million to greater than 2 million.


One thing to note however, is that from 1976 to 2009---The state of California has seen a huge increase in population and hence a big increase in the size of its labor force. In fact over 33 years, it has increased almost 80% from less than 10 million workers to around 18 million workers.

The unemployment rate is just the # of jobless workers divided by the labor force---As you can see, California is seeing record high unemployment rates of 12.5% as of October 2009.
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What is interesting to note is that from April 2009 to October 2009, the BLS thinks that California's labor force dropped by almost 300,000 workers---If you think cynically and say that those people probably really are still in California and not working---The unemployment rate in October would have been closer to 13.9% in California...

China's Empty City

One interesting thing happens during recessions---government officials have a perverse incentive to "save or create" jobs---even if those jobs don't result anything economical (i.e. Dig a Ditch and then fill it up).

Well the Chinese did this on a grand scale. They built a city for 1 million people in inner mongolia that sits empty---because the existing city (30 miles away) is still vibrant and affordable. Essentially, they wasted capital and jobs on an asset that won't be viable for years to come.

Detroit's Unemployment Rate is ~28%

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According to statistics released by the state of Michigan and BLS.gov the state of Michigan had an unemployment rate of 15.3% in September 2009, while jobs in Detroit were twice as difficult to find --- as its jobless rate from September 27.9%.

While you might find it comforting that Detroit's unemployment rate dropped from July 2009 to September; you'll be interested to know that during the same time the labor force shrunk by 8,000 people from 391,000 to 383,000. And the number of people employed dropped from 278,000 in July to 276,000 in September----So in other words, the number of jobs is still on the decline---it's just that the work force was declining at a faster rate.

Disappearing Jobs

A hat tip to the the Great Depression of 2006 blog for posting a link to this video graphic that shows the US unemployment by county for the trailing 12 month average from 2007 to the present.

Latoya Egwuekwe is the creator of the multimedia graphic that shows you just how quickly and how broadly that jobs disappeared from the Midwestern, Eastern, Southern and Western parts of the US. And since the graphic shows the rolling 12 month average, you can rest assured that the next 4 - 6 months will be showing even more of the US losing jobs.

Jobless Rate Doubles; Fannie & Freddie Delinquencies Septuple

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Here is an update of a set of data that I've been paying attention to for the last year. It compares the unemployment rate (Blue Line), the U6 Broader Unemployment Rate (Purple Line, which includes the jobless, and the people working part-time for economic reasons) with the delinquency rate on Fannie Mae (Red Bar) and Freddie Mac (Green Bar) mortgage loans on single family homes.

The picture isn't pleasing---You can see that as broad unemployment rate increased from less than 10% to 17.5% (in October, 2009)---The delinquency rate on home loans for Fannie & Freddie (which are typically Prime Loans) have increased by almost 6 - 8 Fold!

Let me repeat that---In Late 2006 and Early 2007, the prime mortgages were delinquent at merely ~0.5%. Now Freddie Mac has a 3.33% Delinquency Rate (September, 2009) and Fannie has a Delinquency Rate of 4.45%.

People should remember that in 2007, the economy & markets started tanking because sub-prime mortgages started going delinquent... Granted, those loans were going bust a significantly higher rate than the Freddie & Fannie notes---but also remember that Freddie & Fannie loan out significantly more money than what was ever given out to sub-prime borrowers... I don't have the data, but I'd venture to say that in order-of-magnitude--these loan delinquencies could be as bad or worse than the sub-prime crises.