Of Santa Clara's 2,700 new (non-farm) jobs last month, 78% were in construction, hotels, restaurants,
health care or government. Let's call
this category "CHRG" or "Charge" It's like a "Charge" on our collective credit card when we only grow jobs which depend on the real estate bubble or pay mostly minimum wage or are at places which do not
have to generate an actual profit to stay in business. (Insert Sun Micro joke
here.)
From April'05 to April'06, we grew +5.0K
"Charge" jobs, representing 64%+ of the y-o-y
(non-farm) net.
Ouch!
Digging back into prior years,
it gets even more "interesting" when you for the same data:
Apr'96
Apr'01 Apr'06
Total Jobs 888.0
1,050.8 876.5
Farm Jobs
6.4 6.0 5.5
Nonfarm Jobs 881.6
1,044.8 871.0
Nat'l Resources/Mining 0.2 0.2
0.2
Construction 32.2 51.1 43.6
Manufacturing 243.9
258.2 169.8
Trade, Tansport & Utils 134.8 149.8
131.7
Information 25.5
43.8 35.2
Financial Services 31.7
35.4 36.1
Prof & Bus Services 151.5 216.2
160.2
Education & Health Svcs 80.2
89.8 98.3
Leisure & Hospitality 63.5
74.8 74.0
Other Services 25.9
26.4 24.4
Government
92.2 87.3 97.5
Oddly, between 2001 and 2006, "only" -88.4K manufacturing jobs were lost, representing barely
50% of the (-174.3K) total lost. Wasn't the 2002 recession supposedly just a flushing out of manufacturing jobs
to China? What happened to the other 50%?
Adding private sector jobs (tracked by the state but not reported locally):
Total Private 789.4K 945.6K 773.5K
89.5% 90.5% 88.8%
"Charge" Jobs 268.1K
303.0K 313.4K
27.0% 29.0% 36.0%
Skipping the bubble, from April'96 to April'06, we
lost -11.5K jobs in the private sector.
Zeroing out for "Charge" jobs, the loss would be -45.3K!
Yet we're supposedly in an employment recovery?
A little further afield, it is difficult to isolate real estate-related jobs outside
of "construction." California's tracking of county jobs by category finds only:
132021 Appraisers and Assessors or RE -- 210
419021 Real Estate Brokers -- 170
419022 Real Estate Sales Agents --
280
434141 Loans Interviewers and Clerks -- 940
If you believe these categories really account for only 1,600 jobs in Santa Clara
County, we have a bridge for you in Brooklyn.
On a slightly more serious note, we came across the following form
Inman News dated May 25, 2006 (emphasis
added):
"The California Department of Real Estate announced today that there are about 500,000 real estate licensees in the state,
which means that one in every 52 adults in California has a real estate license."
Applied to Santa Clara County, this is ~16,000 licensed real estate
agents!
Conclusion:
Never mind the dot-com boom, there are fewer total jobs today in Santa Clara County
than in 1996!
If housing prices flatten (not to mention fall), OR consumers cut back on hotel and
restaurant spending, OR if tax receipts fall OR if companies (continue to) cut back on employee benefits, our
"Charge" card spending limits will be cut. We subscribe to the theory these are all inter-related and the
whole house of cards will come tumbling down at the first evidence of trouble in any of these areas.
This proliferation of "Charge" jobs could turn out to be short-lived.
* * * * *
...Coming soon, VC funding update.
