“It Takes a Village” To Get a Job in California Today

These days to get a job in California it takes use of job search boards and social media techniques.  It takes use of networks of business associates and acquaintances. When financially possible, it takes the assistance of a career coach. Most of all, though, it takes a village. Connie Brock is one of our most […]

Job Creation and California’s “Collaborative Consumption” Economy

AirBnB, Froomz, Getaround, Vayable, and TaskRabbit are part of the growing “Collaborative Consumption” economy in California. It is an economy driven by the internet, technology and the entrepreneurship of young Californians. For California’s workforce community, it is creating new markets and new forms of employment. AirBnB allows individuals to rent apartments and houses/rooms in houses […]

What Will Come After LinkedIn and Monster?

In just the past five years, California has seen an explosion of internet job boards, internet job training sites, and internet job hunting blogs. The supersite job boards, Monster and CareerBuilder, have been joined by hundreds of smaller boards, as well as by the job aggregators, such as Indeed and SimplyHired. These boards also have […]

Social Media and Internet Commerce Job Growth in California

Earlier this month, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) hosted a lunch for its business members  with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. Like all SVLG events, the room was packed, a combination of old line financial services and accounting firms, along with newer alternate energy and technology firms. The gathering was meant to cover a […]

We’re All Temps Now: How the Job World Shifted in California

This essay first appeared earlier this week in Zocalo Public Square. California Used To Embody Stable, Middle-Class Living. It Was a Brief Interlude. The photo below was taken at the Lockheed Aircraft Company Christmas Party in Burbank in 1950. The smiling Lockheed workers are receiving awards in honor of their fifth anniversaries at the company, […]

California Employment and the “Anchor Institution”

In January of this year, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) announced that it had chosen the City of Richmond as the site for its second campus.  It was a tremendous success for the City, which won over twenty competitors in the region, after a year- long competition. The LBNL is projected to include more […]

The Jobs with Most Openings in 2020

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released its 10 year employment  projections, covering the years 2010-2020. These projections show us, once again, that despite the focus on “knowledge economy” occupations, these “knowledge economy” occupations with a few exceptions (notably  Registered nurses) are not projected among the main job generators. As with previous BLS […]

SF Sheriff Mirkarimi: When Politics Trumps Truth in California

In early January, this “California Employment” column departed from its job focus  to detail an  important and brave action in San Francisco. Advocates against domestic violence  stood up against the attempt by newly elected Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and an Old Boys Network of  former San Francisco politicians to  sweep under the rug a domestic violence […]

The Exploding Disability Rolls in California

Considerable attention has been given over the past few years in California to the increase in Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients, and the corresponding insolvency of the UI fund. In the December 2011 survey week, the number of UI recipients stood at 536,442, up very slightly from the previous month and down from 599,221 in December […]

Middlemarch, California

In George Eliot’s 1874 novel Middlemarch, the young doctor Tertius Lydgate establishes his practice in the fictional Midlands town of Middlemarch. Though he lives far away from London, the center of medical research, he seeks to use his local efforts to contribute to the stock of medical knowledge. “He did not simply aim at a […]