From the LA Times: Surge in unemployment puts California's Inland Empire in tailspin.
State numbers released Friday show the Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario area is now suffering from its highest unemployment rate in 13 years at 9.5% in October -- 3 percentage points higher than the national rate and 1.3 points higher than the state's rate of 8.2%.
Joblessness in the Inland Empire grew by 61,500 in the year from October 2007 to October 2008 -- a 54.1% increase amounting to a total of 175,100 people out of work, according to the California Employment Development Department.
A large chunk of those unemployed came from the construction industry, which shed 15,500 jobs, or 14.1% of its workforce, over the 12-month span. Manufacturing was responsible for 7,600 lost jobs, a 6.5% decline, and retail lost 5,800 jobs, a 3.3% drop.
"You see less people at the restaurants and carwashes," said Riverside Mayor Ronald Loveridge. "There is real pain almost everywhere you turn. My daughter is a counselor at Riverside Community College and she told me she met a [student] whose house was up for foreclosure. Her last resort would have been to move in with her parents, but their home is up for foreclosure.."
Wonder if the [student] was studying `economics'.
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