California has seen job openings plunge 30% this year even as its unemployment rate has spiked — as businesses and residents alike fled the high taxes and soaring cost of living in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state.
The Democrat-run stronghold — where Newsom implemented a controversial $20 minimum wage hike for fast food workers in April — had 641,000 job openings in August, compared to 920,000 in August 2023, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed.
Meanwhile, the year-over-year unemployment rate in September increased to 5.3% from 5% — more than a percentage point above the national rate of 4.1% and the second worst in the US, the data showed. Only Nevada had a higher jobless rate at 5.6%.
The state’s high taxes, along with rampant crime since the pandemic from progressive policies, has led to an exodus by several large companies to business-friendly havens. Elon Musk’s X and Tesla, as well as Oracle; Chevron, Kelly Moore Paints, and investment firm Charles Schwab, have relocated to Texas in the past few years.
“High taxes and high costs are woes to their economy,” Mahoney Asset Management CEO Ken Mahoney told The Post. “It is no surprise [why] people and businesses continue to flee the state.”
California was ranked as the top state for outmigration in 2024 — with an expected net loss of more than 10,000 residents, according to a report by Consumer Affairs based on a sample of more than 100,000 people with an interest in moving.
The median sale price for a single-family home in California surpassed $900,000 for the first time this year, according to the California Association of Realtors.
“In general, the extremely high cost of living in the state and unaffordable housing in major cities has resulted in many employers struggling to hire entry level jobs in retail, construction and home care despite minimum wage growth in fast food,” Ted Jenkin, co-founder and business consultant at oXYGen Financial, told The Post.
The state has also seen a massive decrease in private sector jobs, while government jobs have skyrocketed.
Since September 2022, California has lost a net 154,000 jobs in the private sector and gained 361,000 jobs in the public sector, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, California’s nonpartisan fiscal and policy advisor.
California has long been the place where bad ideas are incubated and then metastasize throughout the country. What we’re seeing here, and what is spreading east, is a return of the feudal system, with the super-rich on top; the clergy — in this, public employees — below them but still a privileged class; and a huge population of imported peasants to serve their masters’ needs and whims. Fun times.
