Labor Day
I worked Labor Day. I spent the first two hours writing my column for the Mountain Democrat. I have a noon deadline every Monday and the newspaper doesn’t care if it falls on a holiday or not, the presses roll every night. I have never seen a rolling press, maybe one night I will stop in and watch them rolling around the building. Then, as I was e-mailing my column to my editor the phone rang. Toby is a loyal reader and needs to sell his house so he and his wife can move to Tucson. That required some work, as did our subsequent meeting at his home in Camino. Then it was back to the office to work on getting two loans closed this week.
Probably lots of small business people worked on Labor Day. According to the U.S. Census data, in our 4-county Sacramento/Capital Region, 20,000 individuals launched their own “mom and pop” businesses between 1999 and 2004. Our region was one of the leaders in entrepreneurial growth in the entire country. Starting ones own business is the last career stop for some. The same Census data reports since 1990 the average time that Americans spend at the same job has been decreasing to about four years. That compares to eight years in the mid-1970s. Before heading into retirement the average American will change jobs at least seven times.
And why not when there are lots of jobs available in California. The state added 192,000 jobs between July of 2005 and July of 2006 and unemployment dropped to 4.8 percent, which was one of the lowest numbers ever, recorded. California’s unemployment rate has routinely run above 8 percent and was 9.9 percent in 1975.
The state Department of Employment projects that California employers will continue to add jobs at a pace of 200,000 a year with trade (including retail), business and professional services accounting for about half of the demand for new workers. The demand for manufacturing will continue to decline (a series of state laws and environmental concerns has driven much manufacturing to other states). Construction has reached a plateau with the decline in new home sales. The EDD says that the fastest growth areas will be computer networks, data technicians, software engineers and home health care. I bet a lot of those people did some work on Monday also.
Probably lots of small business people worked on Labor Day. According to the U.S. Census data, in our 4-county Sacramento/Capital Region, 20,000 individuals launched their own “mom and pop” businesses between 1999 and 2004. Our region was one of the leaders in entrepreneurial growth in the entire country. Starting ones own business is the last career stop for some. The same Census data reports since 1990 the average time that Americans spend at the same job has been decreasing to about four years. That compares to eight years in the mid-1970s. Before heading into retirement the average American will change jobs at least seven times.
And why not when there are lots of jobs available in California. The state added 192,000 jobs between July of 2005 and July of 2006 and unemployment dropped to 4.8 percent, which was one of the lowest numbers ever, recorded. California’s unemployment rate has routinely run above 8 percent and was 9.9 percent in 1975.
The state Department of Employment projects that California employers will continue to add jobs at a pace of 200,000 a year with trade (including retail), business and professional services accounting for about half of the demand for new workers. The demand for manufacturing will continue to decline (a series of state laws and environmental concerns has driven much manufacturing to other states). Construction has reached a plateau with the decline in new home sales. The EDD says that the fastest growth areas will be computer networks, data technicians, software engineers and home health care. I bet a lot of those people did some work on Monday also.
posted by Ken Calhoon at 9:07 AM
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