Gov. Newsom ‘Set California on a Crash Course With Reality’

Gavin Newsom’s California is where dismissive elitist politicians step over bodies on the sidewalks to rush into the State Capitol. Once beautiful California now resembles third world countries where street food vendors sell food on the sidewalk in front of restaurants. Homeless drug addicts camp on city streets, in parks, and along rivers, and illegal aliens hustle for day jobs at home improvement store parking lots.

That’s not a rosy picture. It is no wonder that businesses and residents are leaving California.

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office is out with the Monthly Jobs Report, and notably, they report that previous “monthly jobs reports have tended to overstate actual employment growth in the state.”

This certainly explains why the California labor market is so much softer than the rest of the U.S. – Hiring in California has slowed since Summer 2022, according to the LAO:

Official Survey of State Employment Has Overstated Job Growth Since 2022. Since the middle of 2022, the monthly jobs reports have tended to overstate actual employment growth in the state. The monthly jobs survey has been revised downward routinely over this period, as we detailed here.

Specifically, the LAO also reported “Early Data Revision Shows No Job Creation During 2024 Q4.” 

But Wait! I thought Governor Gavin Newsom said California is the 4th largest economy in the world and is adding jobs.

Gov. Newsom brags that California owns the 4th largest economy in the world. But he leaves out some important details, like poverty, homelessness, crime, taxes, gas prices, housing costs, illegal aliens, welfare recipients, and a $1.3 trillion total budget deficit, just for starters. And, California is the 1st most regulated state in the U.S.

But apparently his administration “overstates employment growth” according to the LAO.

Shifting Focus Now to Hybrid Measure of Employment Growth That Has Tracked Final Data More Closely. Given the recent tendency for the monthly jobs report to overstate employment growth, we have shifted our focus to a hybrid measure of the labor market that averages the main business survey with another monthly federal survey of employment, the “household survey,” which officials use to calculate the state’s unemployment rate. The average of these two monthly trends has tended to track the final jobs tally more closely in recent years.

This Month’s Job Trends. California’s traditional jobs report suggests the state lost 6,100 jobs in June, and the May figure was revised down slightly.  Since the start of the year, the state’s traditional jobs report has shown zero net job gains statewide. Our hybrid measure that includes employment data from the monthly household survey suggests the state added 7,800 jobs in June. Since the start of the year, our hybrid measure shows the state has added a net total of 68,000 jobs.

The math isn’t working out – how do we go from losing 6,100 jobs in June to the new “hybrid measure” where the state added 7,800 jobs in June?

As Will O’Neil, former Newport Beach Mayor told the Globe, “California’s politicians have prioritized creating a public sector that they do control over a private sector that they try to control. The LAO warned us a year ago that California’s private sector lost 154,000 jobs while adding 361,000 government-funded jobs. Newsom and his team have set California on a crash course with reality.”

And the state’s unemployment rate is up to 5.4%:

Previous reports show that California’s private sector job market has been losing jobs while government jobs increased significantly. In November 2024 the Globe reported:

96.5% of new jobs in California this year were government jobs.

Is it any wonder so many people are fleeing the state?

Government jobs do not create wealth – they consume wealth and redistribute it because it is taxpayers who pay for all of it.

We know the state has been bleeding fast food jobs with the state-mandated $20-per-hour fast food minimum wage. “New data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics… revealing a staggering 36,565 fast food jobs have been lost since September 2023 when the $20 per hour minimum wage law, AB 1228, was signed into law,” the Globe reported in June.

Another report says 18,000 fast food jobs have been lost. Both use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but different start dates – when the law was passed versus when the law came into effect.

The Employment Policies Institute released data in May showing AB 1228, California’s $20 wage law for fast food workers, cost non-tipped restaurant workers 250 hours of work annually, equating to up to 7 weeks of lost work – up to $4,000 in lost potential income, the Globe reported.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on California’s economy:

Construction, manufacturing, financial, mining & logging – private sector – are all down. Trade, transportation & utilities are static. Education, health and government are all up.

California reached the 4th largest economy in the world not because of Gavin Newsom’s great leadership or brilliant economic policy, but because Japan’s economy is faltering.

“California’s nominal GDP grew by 6.0%. Japan’s fell by 4.4%.”

As the Center for Jobs recently said, “In California, publicly-funded jobs expansion has replaced other private jobs growth. The state’s substantial projected budget deficits—which are little affected by the present budget agreement and that are expected to remain in the $17-$24 billion range in the upcoming years—threaten to undermine this sole source of jobs expansion in the state as does the state’s reliance on $174 billion in federal funding for this purpose.”

And they say that “Rather than reform the barriers to more robust job creation across all industries and wage levels, California policies have instead given more priority to public benefits expansion—income redistribution rather than the income expansion pursued by other states.”

And that’s why Californians are leaving.