Steady Work: Chelm and California

Chelm was the mythical village of East European Jews, the subject of Jewish folklore and humor. Irving Howe drew on one of the Chelm tales for the epigraph to his collection of essays published in 1966, Steady Work .
Once in Chelm, the mythical village of the East European Jews, a man was appointed to sit at the village gate and wait for the coming of the Messiah. He complained to the village elders that his pay was too low. ‘You are right’, they said to him, ‘The pay is low. But consider: the work is steady.’
Today, with nearly 2.3 million Californians unemployed, any work is attractive—steady or not. However, even today, the California labor market remains highly volatile, with workers moving in and out of jobs with surprising frequency. In previous posts I have discussed the amazing job creation and destruction numbers for California—even in a month that the unemployment rate moves only slightly, over 200,000 jobs are being created and another 200,000 jobs are being destroyed. Almost equally amazing are the numbers regarding the movement among workers in existing jobs.