The latest monthly stats are in – for December 2008 – and the unemployment rate in California is a very ugly 9.3%.
Take a look at this chart from the Los Angeles Times:
Does any word other than “skyrocketing” come to mind?
This is serious stuff – this level of unemployment (and particularly the slope of that line) does great damage to any hope of significant recovery in the near term.
Meanwhile, the elected representatives at the state level can’t even agree on a budget – with the state of California projected to run out of cash in something less than four weeks. What a zoo!