Ryan Ratcliff Quotations

The recent trend in California's employment statistics has been a move from mediocre to downright ugly. After a brief spurt in July and August, employment growth has slowed to a crawl.

Month by month, we're not accelerating anywhere. But we're still cruising along at 80 miles per hour.

Local housing markets will cool off, leading to a slowdown in spending and some job losses in construction and other real estate-related industries. With this in mind, we are currently forecasting a plateau in home prices, a moderate decrease in sales and new building and two years of weak growth. However, this forecast represents the middle of the road.

For about three years now, California has been relying on construction as its major source of job growth.

Almost all of this slowing trend is due to the dramatic swings in Information employment in L.A. County.