Former New York Times columnist William Safire from
time to time told this chestnut from the early 1950s about Princess Margaret
and the matchmaker: A Jewish matchmaker
had the idea of matching up poor Sammy-a nebbish and a schlemiel–with Princess
Margaret then the world’s most eligible woman. Sammy’s mother would not hear of
it: the Princess could not cook and was not Jewish. After weeks of persuading,
with the matchmaker showing how the alliance with British royalty would help
Israel, the mother gave her grudging approval. The matchmaker heaved a sigh of
relief and said, "Now for the hard part".
"Now for the hard
part", indeed: The latest national job numbers released last Friday show that
for job generation, the big challenges remain ahead. In contrast to the
recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s, this Great Recession, though
officially ended, has generated no surge in net job generation. The number of
net jobs added was miniscule, at 36,000 nationwide. The unemployment rate went
down from 9.4 to 9 but only because so many people left the labor
market-leaving the labor force participation rate at 64.2%, the lowest since 1984,
California’s job numbers will not be released for a few
weeks. No signs though suggest that the numbers will be more impressive than
the national numbers. November and December combined yielded a total net gain
of 6500 jobs.
The focus in Sacramento this month is the state budget,
and from a jobs perspective, it should be. Getting the state budget under
control will do more for job creation than any targeted initiatives to spur
jobs. As of December, California had payroll employment of 13.9 million,
roughly 11.5 million in the private sector and 2.4 million in the public
sector. Only private sector confidence in the state’s future will result in
willingness to expand and take risks necessary for growth.
Each of California’s more than one million private sector
businesses with employees has its own story of what it will take to expand. Here’s
one in brief. Kal Krishnan is the president of Kal Krishnan Consulting Services
(KKCS), an engineering and construction management firm based in Oakland. Kal
started the company with one employee (himself) twenty-four years ago. Today,
it has 75 employees in Oakland and Los Angeles.
KKCS is a company whose work is mainly, though not
exclusively, related to public sector infrastructure, particularly
transportation, in California, and whose future is closely tied to the strength
of the California economy. Kal regards nothing as important today for KKCS’s
hiring as the state budget resolution, and a predictable future. The spiking in
California workers’ compensation rates in the early 2000s led him to pull back
on hiring and job expansion. He supports the approach of budget cuts and tax
extensions being proposed by the Governor, as preventing the jarring tax
increases or budget cuts in the future.
Now for the hard
part.