The California Business Roundtable announced today the launch of the California Center for Jobs and the Economy. The Center will provide a comprehensive view of California’s employment picture by region as well as by demographics and industry sectors. The website provides a new data tool that allows users to visually see what is occurring in the state with respect to employment, wages, and other economic data across the regions, by county and by State Senate and Assembly districts.
As Tom Conley, our Chairman of the California Business Roundtable, stated regarding the website, “California businesses, residents and elected officials are going to greatly benefit from the creation of the Center for Jobs and the Economy. Our Board wanted the Center to fill a gap on factual data that will give California the tools to assess key aspects of the jobs environment and the economy, ultimately allowing for further understanding of California’s business climate.”
In starting this project, we based our work on the excellent services provided by the California regional economic development groups, and then built a statewide searchable database to provide an objective and nonpartisan source of information about the jobs environment and economic trends in California, as well as providing information to understand current policy decisions and their impacts on job creation. The data is organized by statewide, GoBiz regions, county level and senate and assembly districts, giving the Center the capability to provide comprehensive data in one place including unemployment rates, county demographics, industry specific information, job growth statistics and types of jobs gained and lost.
The site features current data that shows California’s economy is starting to come back but the recovery is very uneven and it clearly illustrates what Governor Brown has referred to as the ‘two-tiered economy’. We believe that this site will also help policymakers get a better understanding of California’s jobs picture both statewide and in their districts.
As one of our partners, Dr. Michael Shires, Pepperdine University School of Public Policy said about the new site, “Finally we will have a resource to rely on to provide factual, comprehensive, impartial data in a transparent and useful manner that will help us further understand how businesses and jobs are being affected by current policy.”
The data from the Center for Jobs and the Economy is a dynamic, evolving resource which will be expanded and updated as data becomes regularly available. All of the data we incorporate is provided from publically available sources including US Census Bureau, US Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, California Employment Development Department, and California Department of Finance.
Lastly, our Board directed that we develop The Center for Jobs and the Economy as a stand-alone 501c(3) public benefit corporation with its own governance structure and a research advisory council.
We hope that anyone visiting the site will find it a helpful resource and we welcome all user feedback on how to improve the delivery of these services.
For more information on the Center for Jobs and the Economy, please visit: www.centerforjobs.org.