Economy

California Budget Project Labor Day Report

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published September 6, 2010 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 13 years ago.

The California Budget Project reports nearly one million Californians have been out of work now for more than half a year. The number of Californians who have been unemployed for the last six months is now bigger than the population of San Francisco.

Recent high school graduates have been hard hit by the economic downturn. The new report also shows young men are having a tougher time than young women.

Alisa Anderson, the report’s author, said her findings show one of the age groups most affected by the recession is 16- to 24-year-olds.

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"One of the most striking findings in our report is that, for the first time on record, a smaller share of out-of-school youth had jobs than Californians’ approaching retirement age."

Anderson said the number of 55 to 64-year-olds who are still working has been increasing steadily since the early to mid 1990s. She said that may be because many people saw their retirement savings evaporate in the last few years.

The report says job losses for young men fell three times more than the jobs lost for young women because of the decline in construction and manufacturing.

Anderson says even people who have a job are affected by cutbacks in hours.

"The latest data show that the average work week in California reached a 25 year low," she said, "and if you add up all the hours that have been cut during the recession in California, you could actually create more than 400,000 full time jobs out of those hours."

Economy

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.