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From CNBC, the lowest and highest unemployment rates in the country. Two heavily Hispanic agricultural towns, Yuma, AZ and El Centro, CA continue, year after year, to be the unemployment capitals of America.
Yuma’s unemployment statistics over the last generation are remarkable:
If you are looking for a way to predict the next recession, the last two were predicted by Yuma’s unemployment rate dropping, just barely, below 10% in 2000 and 2008.
Generally speaking, most to the worst 20 towns for unemployment are highly Hispanic, while the best 20 tend to be Neal Stephenson-style northern college towns and/or energy boom towns.
It’s almost as if constantly importing from Latin America the people who can’t get better jobs than stoop laborer doesn’t build a modern high-tech economy in the next generation.
Seasonal employment. Also, too many people coming in for the number of available jobs.
I’m no Keynesian by any means, but I wouldn’t take it too badly if the US Gov’t stepped in with some stimulus jobs in those top 5 on the high list, in the transportation sector:
Bus Drivers wanted: Good hours. Twice daily trips to Mexico. Requires CDL for southband legs only, no passengers northbound. Hable Espanol?! This may be for you, amigo. Pay will be direct deposited into any legal Mexican bank account.
Yuma looks like Vtach. How has it survived?
I grew up in El Centro, it has been an unemployment leader for at least forty years. Lots of public housing, etc. Great place to write grants. Very close to the border, as is Yuma, only El Centro is across the border from a much larger Mexican town.
On the subject of hate-stats, here are the top 100 metro areas in the U.S. ranked by college degree:
Good to know that Cher, Dick Van Dyke, Donald O’Connor, Gene Hackman, Janis Joplin and Tom Seaver made it out of those towns before the employment situation went all to hell.
Bus Drivers wanted: Good hours. Twice daily trips to Mexico. Requires CDL for southband legs only, no passengers northbound. Hable Espanol?! This may be for you, amigo. Pay will be direct deposited into any legal Mexican bank account.
ROTFL. 🙂
If Obamacare keeps its present trajectory, those unemployed can take up medical jobs, just like the third-world imports working in the UK for the National Health Service.
Fresno High also produced Dick Ellsworth, Dick Selma, and Jim Maloney, three pitchers who all graduated less than four years ahead of Seaver, and who won a combined 291 games in the majors.
600 major league victories out of Fresno High in half a decade?
Jim Maloney’s arm burned out young. He’d won 134 games before he turned 30, but never won another. If he’d stayed healthy, pitching for the Big Red Machine in the 1970s he might have made the Hall of Fame. 250 career wins easy.
It’s interesting that the Reds at their Big Red Machine peak didn’t really have a signature pitcher. Gary Nolan, Don Gullet, Clay Kirby — not exactly household names. Seaver only showed up at the very end.
Say, since we’ve finally switched back over to baseball, Clayton Kershaw had the best game of his postseason career tonight — 8 scoreless innings on only 85 pitches, giving up just two hits. He overcame his gopheritis for at least one outing.
I also noticed that the Dodgers and Braves finished off their game in an encouragingly-crisp 2:35 — and the Sox and Yankees managed to wrap it up in under 4 hours, which I guess is pretty good for them.
Try explaining this fact, gently, to The Economist editorial board.
You’d have more success in trying to teach a brick wall to speak.
The two lists the south Central Valley always dominates: unemployment and car theft. They’re also contenders in the Tweakerlympics and poor healthcare outcomes.
How the hell did I waste 30 years of my life there?
And Reg Cæsar, not even a hat tip for George Lucas?
“Generally speaking, most to the worst 20 towns for unemployment are highly Hispanic, while the best 20 tend to be Neal Stephenson-style northern college towns and/or energy boom towns.”
Sorry Steve, but even after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson ,
I can’t figure out what a “Neal Stephenson-style northern college town” is. Explanation, please.
Sorry Steve, but even after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson ,
I can't figure out what a "Neal Stephenson-style northern college town" is. Explanation, please.
Sci fi author Neal Stephenson promotes two kinds of idiosyncratic identity politics — Nerd Liberation and northern college town pride (e.g., Ithaca, Ames, Champaign-Urbana, Iowa City, Madison, etc.)
cotton pickin finger lickin chicken pluckers?
The farm workers in Yuma work through the winter mostly harvesting and packing lettuce and other salad vegetables. Those that work year round travel to do the same thing in the area around Salinas, California. If they stay around Yuma, they have some limited work harvesting melons and spend the rest of their time collecting unemployment benefits. The season lasts longer in Salinas than Yuma. Some of the children of the Mexican workers will do that same work as they become adults, but because the pay is so low, most try to do something else, necessitating the importation of more workers. Of course a lot of them never move here, they just cross the border every day from San Luis Colorado and ride the buses from the border that are provided by the big harvesting companies. The post office in San Luis, Arizona is huge because border crossers need PO boxes so they can pick up their unemployment checks. A lot of streets in San Luis are named for Democratic politicians. The only one named for a Republican is, you guessed it, McCain. Maybe Flake will get one some day, but I doubt it.
When I was a PO in the 1990’s I supervised a guy who was a US citizen who had been working in the fields since the late 1970’s, when he wasn’t in prison for drug charges. He complained he was making about $3/hour more in the beginning of his career than he was making in the mid 90’s, without adjusting for inflation. Of course that was when Cesar Chavez was in his prime as an effective union leader railing against importing cheaper labor from Mexico.
I’m sure everyone remembers having to pay outrageous prices for salad vegetables back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, right?