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Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
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Jobless rates rise in all US metro areas in March - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobless-rates-rise-in-all-US-apf-15068914.html - broken link)
Ya know, That means that pretty much one out of every 5 hardworking people you see...is not. One out of five. That's a big, hearty WOW! if I ever said WOW! before, and I've been saying WOW! a lot lately.
The jobless rate jumped to 17 percent in Bend, Ore., a 9.2 percentage-point rise and the second-biggest monthly gainer. Bend for years has been the center of the central Oregon real estate and construction boom, largely fueled by retirees from California...
Oregon in total is one of the top 10% in the nation for unemployment. If you take a glance at the moving boards, people are still trying to move up here with little saved up and expecting to get "Just Any" job to make ends meet till things improve. Riding past the missions in Portland every day I get to see those ranks of people who didn't have enough savings or didn't meet their optimistic assumptions against the the other 100k of people who are trying to get any job to get by and ride things out. Even being at one of the largest employers in health care is not any assurance here...I wasn't one affected though they got rid of about 10% of my department, but the company laid off about 1/8 of their personnel in the last 4 months (about 1,200 people)
Then there is this part of the same news item:
El Centro, Calif., continued to claim the highest unemployment rate -- 25.1 percent. The jobless rate there is notoriously high because there are so many unemployed seasonal agriculture workers.
Following close behind were Merced, Calif., with a jobless rate of 20.4 percent,
Some strange places are showing high rates of unemployment.
Bend is a beautiful area of the country, but part of the problem is with Oregon. Everything I read about Oregon is that it is Anti-Business. Good friend that just closed his business mentioned that there is more Government red tape to process than any other states!
What a shame to the area, some states never change
Not sure I would say anti-business, it seems too strong, but there is certainly the thought that you must take away from the companies that do well in order to provide for those who do not (both small companies and less fortunate people). I think Oregon is kicking butt compared to California, but that's not really saying much.
I can speak from the large health care area that we get slapped around a good bit with taxes, fees, and being forced to take a good number of people who can't pay (non emergency patients)...and there's currently bills in the works to expand the programs. It's nice to be compassionate, but often our programs go to benefit the poorest of the poor as handouts instead of the a helping hand for people trying to work hard and get ahead.
I can say two examples that made me shake my head...one was a working mom who was in a car accident, worked in a lower middle income position, that had surgery to reset bones and put pins in...didn't qualify for more help then a reduction in her bills to a contracted rate instead of full charge (and a payment plan). The second is a homeless drug addict, through the program his care was paid for (less then cost though) to include oncology treatments for pretty much terminal cancer (possible but extremely unlikely positive outcome) that included IV treatments that are in no fashion cheap. So the accident pretty much bankrupted her, most likely on the street by now instead of working, while we provide care to the person who pretty much destroyed their own life and has never had a good position to contribute...and the hospital gets taxed the hell out of to pay for his care.
It's the lack of water in California that is hitting the ag works.... The westside of the "valley" has had it's water cut (Federal/State) for many crops, except permant plantings causing a tremendous loss of job to one of the biggest industries in California, and not really what we all need now on top of eveything else... reduced food production.. higher prices still, and if we don't get water this winter........
Bend boomed when people with money - on paper - moved in to the area. Now that the on-paper wealth has evaporated, there's no money left there. Bend's boom was a house of credit cards.
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