A brief article over the weekend in our local newspaper, The Bakersfield Californian, commented that California’s and Kern County’s unemployment rates edged up in July, to 12.0% and 15.5% respectively (California, Kern Jobless Rates Both Up In July). Bakersfield, meanwhile, checked in at 10.9%, which caused me to wonder how the rest of California’s major cities [...]
Michigan currently suffers the second-highest unemployment rate in the country, 13.1% (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Its most populous city, Detroit, origin of America’s auto industry, has a 14.4% unemployment rate. At least that’s down from 16% a year ago, but it has been consistently higher than the national average since 2001. (Note: Nevada has the [...]
My post on Tuesday, On California’s Shifting Tax Burden, cited a recent Los Angeles Times story claiming taxes paid by California businesses have been shrinking over the last 30 years. It attracted expected responses from some of my business-owner friends with counter-claims of their own. As a business owner myself, I’m certainly not feeling under-taxed. [...]
Of all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment. – Jane Addams, 1910 What’s the path to 10+% unemployment look like? My friend and State Farm Insurance agent, Mike Brazzell, sent over an interesting video depiction of it entitled “The Decline: The Geography of a Recession,” by labor writer LaToya Egwuekwe. [...]
