patrick.net

Yeah, there was something a bit odd about the spectacular Feb numbers.

This won't keep a certain duck from predicting housing inflation in CA.

SF ace says

Feb is an outlier, but so was March.

Maybe you forgot this (latimes - Mar 26, 2011)?

California adds nearly 100,000 jobs in February as hiring accelerates
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-jobs-20110326,0,3919526.story
The 96,500-job jump was the biggest monthly increase since the current record system began in 1990, state officials said. California had added a paltry 700 jobs in January.

Some economists were surprised by the huge uptick and cautioned that it could be revised downward.

All of these numbers are from the BLS.

So yes, February (+96.5K) was an outlier. Why do you think that March (-11.6K jobs) is an outlier?

SF ace says

CA added 90,600 jobs so far in 2011.

And are you sure about that number?

700(JAN) + 84,600(FEB) - 11,600(MAR) = 73,700 net jobs added so far in 2011.

For the sake of consistency, all of these estimates came from the latimes (which should be sourced from the BLS), who authored the article cited in the original post and in my last comment. I think that the 84,600 is the revised estimate for February (which was originally reported as 96,500)

SF ace says

Nationally it is about 480K. so 90/480 = 18.75% (vs 12% population).

You lost me here...

SF ace says

From the link,

“Still, California has added 90,600 jobs this year”

Yep. You're right. I wonder if they (the latimes) are using a different # for January jobs (>700) than they published in their article from March 16... even if you use their original estimate for February jobs (96,500) the math doesn't work out.

700+96,500-11,600 = 85,600 jobs added so far in CA in 2011

Doesn't make sense to me...

(Note, I checked the original BLS report for the Jan 2011 number, and it was +22.6 for California. And the numbers still do not add up to 90,600)

Even so... ~74,000-91,000 jobs added in Q1 2011 is not that impressive compared to:

36,700,000 people in California (Wiki/Census)
28,500,000 non-institutional population (BLS)
18,000,000 in workforce (63% - BLS)
15,800,000 employed (55% - BLS)
2,200,000 unemployed (12% - BLS)

for March 2011 in California
(NSA; http://www.bls.gov/lau/ststdsadata.txt)

That said, initial claims for unemployment ending Apr 2 week were down for CA (DOL):
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending April 2 were in Massachusetts (+2,575), Pennsylvania (+1,606), Ohio (+1,094), Illinois (1,013), and Georgia (+625), while the largest decreases were in California (-8,095), Texas (-2,913), Florida (-1,731), Missouri (-898), and Oregon (-733).

SF ace says

so 90,600 jobs were created in CA in 2011. Nationally (68,000 + 194,000 + 216,000 = 478,000) were created in 2011. CA accounted for 90,600/478,000 = 18.96% of overall jobs created so far in 2011.

OK, now I get what you're trying to say.

SF ace says

It’s pretty obvious that CA did not account for 50% of the jobs gained (compared to national) in Feb and turn around with -5% in March.

Why couldn't this happen? This line of reasoning still doesn't follow... are you trying to selectively limit your analysis of the job creation trend recorded since 1990 to January, February, and March of 2011 to cast March 2011 as an outlier?

I'd rather see some evidence that -11,600 jobs is indeed an outlier to the long term trend.

SF ace says

A quarter average is more representative of what is happening don’t you think.

Depends on the timescale of the trend you're trying to evaluate, and the resolution desired. And no, I don't think that fixation on a single quarter is any better than fixation on any single month.

SF ace says

CA added 90,600 jobs so far in 2011. Nationally it is about 480K. so 90/480 = 18.75% (vs 12% population). taxes collected is ahead of projections. Feb is an outlier, but so was March.
make everyday count

I wonder how many of those 90,600 are six figure jobs to support the mid-high CA home purchases?

shrekgrinch says

There are tons of jobs out there. At least for web developers. I expect to have two offers put on my plate to consider any time now.

Tech seems to have added a large portion of the total jobs in CA thus far this year. So what do you think is going on? Is this the start of a long term trend (for technology) or just job market volatility?

shrekgrinch says

But the job statistics reports are always lagging indicators while what we’ve been seeing is in real time.

We'll have to wait and see I suppose.

Just curious, this pick up you've noticed is all private sector, right? Also, do you know if many of the employers that have approached your group contract with the state government? One thing I'm wondering about is whether state government agencies are 'spending out' 2010 dollars in private sector contracts before the FY ends.

SF ace says

If you reread your headnote you mentioned Google is hiring aggressively and is giving everyone 10% across the board raise. I bet the bonus was 2X-3X more than 2009 as well.

I didn't see anything about a 10% across the board raise in the headnote, the original article, or the linked Jan CNN article... do you have a source for this?

SF ace says

Google doesn’t do this out of charity, it is a business need.

Sure, I believe that google will only pay out as much as it has to for employees, but the latimes article specifically indicates that:

But companies such as Google Inc. have been punished for adding so many jobs. Wall Street analysts sent Google stock to a six-month low Thursday after the company missed analysts’ earnings estimates, in part because of hiring expenses.On Friday, Google shares plunged $47.81, or 8.3%, to $530.70. The stock is down 10.7% this year.

I'm not a Wall Street analyst, so I can't say that the article's interpretation is strictly true. Provided it is correct, however, it does illustrate that from a cost-benefit perspective, $ paid to employees had better produce profits. Otherwise, $ paid out for employment is effectively being wasted, and either needs to be reduced (by pay cuts or terminations) or funneled elsewhere (say, to more lower cost employees overseas).

SF ace says

Google average 1.2M in revenue per employee and their profit margin is over 30%. You do the numbers and figure out just how valuable employees are overall. 10K dollars of additional expense compared to 400K in income before tax.

If this was strictly true, then google would never want to decrease employment. But it did just that in 2008 (see the Jan CNN article) when times got really tough. And times are still tough by many measures.

Also, not all employees uniformly contribute to total revenue. Some employees are always worth more than others, and some are expendable.

SF ace says

In the end, Google wants to retain who they have because the job market is more favorable for employees to move around, which is a reflection that the SV job market is improving.

Again, this may be true for some employees, but I doubt it is true across the board, even for tech. People with the right experience and job skills will almost always have some degree of mobility, even in a bad job market (say... 12% unemployment).

SF ace says

budgets have been mostly slashed in 2008-2009 and stable in 2010. In 2011, I bet most companies have forecasted increased budgets across the board which will be somewhat reflected in earnings G&A expense (or R&D for companies like Sandisk, Rambus) and you can easily see they are trending way up.

Maybe, but this mode of thinking surprises me a bit. Consider that the economic 'recovery' is still shaky at best, AND that there are so many potential headwinds this year to any sort of 'organic' strengthening.

@Shrek,

Good for you. Let us know how it goes. But keep waiting. Are home prices are still out of whack in Fremont?