Madison Aument
For 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Madison Aument. This is Economics IE. Each month, IEGO, a nonprofit focused on economic growth in the Inland Empire, publishes the IE Labor Market Pulse. The newsletter analyzes monthly employment data to give readers insight into the IE labor market. Today, I'm speaking with Matt Mena, who's IEGO's executive director, about last month's job numbers. Why don't we start with industry data? What do those numbers look like for June?
Matthew Mena
The industry data for June is we added jobs in construction. So we added 1,700 jobs in construction. We also added 1,100 jobs in government, and then also the food service and hospitality. We also added another 1,100, so both the food service and construction probably are seasonal in nature. We did have declines, though, in administrative support services. So we had 2,100 jobs lost. On the private education services, which is also what I think is seasonal, is 900 jobs lost. And then on the warehousing and transportation, we have also seen another job loss. So we saw 900 jobs lost there, which, as a grand total from January, it's around 5,000 jobs — a little over 5,000 jobs — that we've lost in warehousing and transportation.
Madison Aument
Wow. And it's the sixth month in a row that we've seen losses in warehousing and transportation, right?
Matthew Mena
That's correct. And when we first started in January, we thought that this was going to be just a slump. We always see a job loss from December to January because warehousing and transportation kind of mimic retail in that nature, because of the online shopping. But we have seen this decline for six straight months, which means that it's a larger indicator. It probably is definitely affected by global trade. So, as we heard tariffs, we haven't seen that really hit our economy in a substantial way. We still have toilet paper at Target. We still have things on the shelves, but what we are seeing is the need for it is decreasing. So the port activity is also decreasing. The labor market for warehousing and transportation typically consists of, I hate to say the phrase "low-skilled," but it's individuals who don't have the training yet. And so when we are talking about individuals in our economy, especially in the Inland Empire, that includes foreign-born participants too. We should keep an eye on that. This is a pretty big indicator because warehousing and transportation make up a huge part of our economy in the Inland Empire. It's been that way for about the past 20 years. As it's starting to decline, that means we need to diversify what and how we're training our population.
Madison Aument
Can you kind of contextualize what a 0.6% increase means? Like, what would a more normal number look like?
Matthew Mena
In a healthy economy, you kind of want around 4 to 5 percent. So we're still not out of that range, really, but going past 5 percent does mean that we don't have enough jobs for the workers. That's something to keep an eye on. Just to put it in perspective, we are above the state average, which we were below for a while. The state's average is 5.1 percent, and the national average is 4.1 percent. This is something that we do see, especially in the inland regions of California, where we're kind of the canary in the coal mine. We're the first affected by some of the downturn, and we are also the last to recover. As we saw with the recession, which ended in 2010, I started my economic development career around 2017, and we were still talking about the effects of the recession. This is something we probably have to keep an eye on. And as we start to look at how we can diversify our economy, these are things that we have to do before it's too late.
Madison Aument
And you did say we added 700 jobs. What sectors were those jobs in?
Matthew Mena
The 700 jobs were a combination of food service, government, and construction. Those are pretty big indicators of investments that are being made. Construction is something that is a positive in our economy. Food service is kind of a typical thing that you see at the beginning of summer, especially for regions like Palm Springs, Coachella Valley, and Big Bear — places that have tourism and accommodations linked to their local economies.
Madison Aument
You can find this segment and a link to the IE Labor Market Pulse at kvcrnews.org. This segment is funded by the Nowak family. For KVCR News, I’m Madison Aument.
