On the last day of March, President Trump promised in a tweet that companies – and subsequently jobs and money – would be pouring into the country. He ended with the cheery statement, “It is beautiful to watch!”
Well, many are watching … and waiting.
On April 9th, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment report. They found that unemployment rates were higher year-over-year in 255 of the 387 metropolitan areas and lower in just 97 places.
Particularly hard hit was California.
Of the top ten metropolitan areas with the highest unemployment rates – eight were in California.
While the national average was 4.5%, these eight areas of California had unemployment rates ranging from 8.9% in Fresno to 17.2% in El Centro.
While certain highly populated areas in California are still skirting just under the national average, many sectors in those metropolitan areas are still being hit with job losses.
“The substantial loss of technology jobs in the Bay Area so far this year is a huge shock to the Bay Area economy … Bay Area employers chopped 6,900 tech jobs in January and another 1,800 in February, the Beacon Economics numbers show,” reported George Avalos of Mercury News. “Over the same two months, the Bay Area lost 9,900 jobs. Put another way, the tech industry’s net job losses in the Bay Area accounted for 88% of all the net job losses in the nine-county region so far this year.”
And earlier this week, FedEx announced it would close three of its operations around the Bay Area – in Oakland, Emeryville, and San Rafael. That will mean another almost 200 workers hitting the unemployment lines.
Further taking aim at California – and increasing the potential for even more job losses – Trump signed an Executive Order on April 8th,, purporting to be Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.
The Executive Order puts a direct focus on the likes of New York and California. Within the stated purpose of the Executive Order, Trump went so far as to refer to New York’s Clean Energy Standards as a ‘climate change extortion law’ and called California’s carbon policies ‘radical requirements.’
The statement concluded that burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies threatened American energy dominance and economic security and should not stand.
However, what the President fails to realize is that the Clean Energy sector, particularly in California, is a strong source of jobs and money.
The industry in California has grown exponentially in recent years, providing many citizens with high-paying jobs.
The Clean Jobs California annual report showed that the Clean Energy Sector employs almost 545,000 Californians.
Furthermore, the report found that the jobs were spread across much of the state.
Nearly 160,000 of the state’s clean energy workers are in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area, 106,500 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward region, 54,000 in San Diego-Carlsbad, and 50,000 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara.
Additionally, approximately 2.7 percent of the state’s clean energy jobs (14,500) are in rural or non-metropolitan areas, which are the exact areas that are often subject to higher unemployment rates.
With unemployment already on the rise in many areas of California and the Administration’s new Executive Order pushing to revive the fossil fuel industry – potentially at the cost of the Clean Energy sector – it likely is not a ‘beautiful thing to watch’ if you live in California.
Perhaps it is just the ideologically motivated policies of the President that fail to see the potential of a sector already established and creating jobs – and money – in a State that could clearly benefit from continued industry growth and job creation.