Our political leaders are often pulled in many directions. The exception is during a crisis. During the great recession and glacially moving recovery, we heard many elected officials declare a jobs crisis and the creation of jobs as the top priority.
Lately however, I have become concerned that our leaders at the local, state and federal levels have come to the conclusion that our economy is out of the woods and that other issues should take priority. Yes, locally there are exciting visions on the horizon such as the steady growth of Silicon Beach and continued construction downtown. But the need to maintain a crisis mentality about job creation came into sharp focus this past week when The Boeing Co. announced that C-17 production will come to a halt in 2015 and the unemployment rate in Los Angeles County increased to 10.1 from 9.9 percent.
If you have a job, this news may seem abstract, so let me illustrate this phenomenon in real terms. This past week I was honored to speak at the opening of the Chinatown Walmart Neighborhood Market. A store that brings fresh food and groceries to a community and empty storefront that has been waiting for more than 20 years. This market created 95 new jobs in Los Angeles and it’s hard to describe the joy on every face of the new associates. For all the political fighting it took to open this store, it should be noted that Walmart had 8,000 applications for those 95 jobs.
We must all make it clear to our elected leaders that the jobs crisis is not over. We still have 202,000 fewer jobs in L.A. County than we did at the start of the great recession. That’s thousands of families who know that job creation is the No. 1 priority in their lives.