Will Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” Help Women Advance in Our California Economy?
From the Imperial County through the Central Valley and north to Shasta, Del Norte and Modoc counties, and especially in the coastal regions of our state, Californians will soon hear more of Ms. Sheryl Sandberg. In the next week a massive public relation campaign will be launched to publicize Ms. Sandberg’s new book , Lean […]
Who Stole Bohemia?
(This is a longer version of an essay that first appeared last Friday, Jan 25, in the San Francisco Chronicle opinion section.) San Francisco is being taken over by technology workers; its creative culture replaced by a culture of money; its bohemia replaced by a tech conformity. That’s the view put forward recently by former […]
Job Advice for 2013 from Uncle Marty Nemko: California’s Favorite Job Coach
Marty Nemko is one of the deans of job coaches in California. He has been advising job seekers in person and through radio and newspaper columns since 1986. Entering his 27th year, he has lost none of his enthusiasm for placing people into jobs, and following up for successful placements. Many Bay Area residents know […]
What Technological Change Portends for California’s Job Structure
How is the internet/mobile technology changing the job structure in California? What jobs are being eliminated? What jobs are being created? Are more jobs being created than destroyed? These questions are at the heart of several books and articles published in the past year, among the most prominent being Michael Saylor’s The Mobile Wave. As […]
The New Normal in California Employment; and Mr. Peguese’ Christmas Presents
As we come to the end of 2012, California is in better shape today in terms of unemployment rate and payroll jobs than the previous few years. The latest state unemployment rate, through October 2012, is 10.1%, down from 11.5% in October 2011 and 12.5% in October 2010. Payroll jobs are at 14.4 million, a […]
Will Proposition 39 Finally Jumpstart Green Jobs in California
Over the past two decades in California, there have been several job sectors—Internet commerce, Construction, Green technology–that were promoted as the next major job generators, only to come up short. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the dot.com companies were ushering in a new wave of software technology and internet commerce jobs. Remember Webvan, […]
Growing Old in the California Job Market
Recently, Tom Vacar, Channel 2 consumer editor e-mailed me the resume of a friend of his who is looking for work. The man has a distinguished career in communications for large scale infrastructure projects, including serving as a spokesperson for a major municipal entity. Tom and I are part of an informal employment network for […]
Full Time Work Disappearing in California
Earlier this month when the national unemployment numbers were announced, most of the California media put forward an upbeat narrative of continued job recovery, noting the national unemployment rate number (7.9%, still below 8%) or the payroll jobs number (gain of 171,000 jobs). At KPIX-CBS, Channel 5 in the Bay Area, Ms. Sandra Lee, the […]
Kiva and the Micro-Lending Boom in California
California is in the midst of a micro-lending boom, driven by the rise of internet-based crowdfunding sites, including Kiva, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and RocketHub. The micro lending sites are opening new lending markets, in peer to peer lending. They are building new ties between lenders and California micro-businesses, with the lender more of a business development […]
The Job Network and Our Autism Job Club
This week’s Fox and Hounds California employment posting is a dispatch from our Autism Job Club. It links to an essay that was first published last week at Zocalo Public Square. In this essay, I discuss the limits of traditional job search assistance and job placement assistance, and the development of more extensive job networks, […]