Professor Daniel MacDonald of California State University, San Bernardino, joined KVCR's Jonathan Linden to explain more about the report and other economic indicators within the Inland Empire. Professor MacDonald is the Chair of the Department of Economics at CSUSB and authors the weekly email newsletter "Inland Empire Economic Update."
Within the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages was the rate for Labor Force Participation, which Professor MacDonalds said looked favorable for the Inland Empire region. According to Investopedia, the measure of labor force participation is "an estimate of an economy's active workforce." They say the formula looks at the number of people ages 16 and over who are employed or actively seeking employment divided by the total noninstitutionalized, civilian working-age population.
According to Professor MacDonald, there has been a decrease in labor force participation in California, but the opposite has occurred in the Inland Empire. He said the Inland Empire rates show a good promising trend for the region and shows that people here in the Inland Empire want to get back to work and are able to get back to work. "In fact, their (Labor Force Participation) actually going in the positive direction, the Inland Empire, even though state-wide we're actually going in the negative direction."
Professor MacDonald also discussed the 6.3% unemployment rate in Riverside and San Bernardino County. He said that the rate is pretty good and that unemployment rates have taken a sharp decline over the last three months. He said rates were staying around 7% to 8% for a period. "So the sharp decline that we've seen over the last three months or so is promising in terms of showing that the economy is on the path to recovery," said MacDonald.
