the thousands of jobs that technology companies shed over the same period. As the San Diego Union-Tribune recently reported, revised data from the California Employment Development Department shows that 50,500 workers in the county lost their jobs last year. Officially, the jobless rate hit 11 percent in January for San Diego County—marking the highest rate of unemployment since the California Employment Development Department adopted its current statistical methodology in 1990. It was the seventh consecutive month with unemployment above 10 percent, according to data released March 9.
Nevetheless, there are still some signs that suggest employment is strengthening—perhaps along with the regional economy. In its quarterly evaluation of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, the Brookings Institute’s MetroMonitor report, issued last week, found that employment in San Diego County rose by 0.3 percent during the fourth quarter. (The report also noted a decline in foreclosures and a relatively strong housing market.) University of San Diego economist Alan Gin told the San Diego Union-Tribune he calculated a similar blip that showed a 0.2 percent increase in employment, or about 2,300 jobs.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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