Budget Badness Postscript — The Face of California’s Economy

To put a more human face on the October 27 posting on the state budget:

The landlord of California’s Capitol, is an education lobbying firm. It is in the process of hiring a new receptionist. An ad was placed on Craigslist. 

They stopped counting after 298 applicants. Of the 298, 200 were logged in just 24 hours. 

While the volume of applicants speaks volumes about the state of this state’s economy, a look at the applications is also revealing. 

A number of applicants were formerly in financial services. A loan processor at Wachovia. An escrow assistant. A loan closing coordinator at Bank of America. A title recorder. A loan officer who described their job, which ended in September, as trying to “salvage any potential loan.” 

Some applicants are former receptionists, office assistants or clericals who appear to have been laid off.  

Others are recent graduates with degrees in areas like Criminal Justice, Microbiology, Political Science, and Health Care Administration trying to get any job that will give them some work experience because of the scarcity of jobs in their fields. 

Several applicants were either student assistants or junior employees working for the state who appear to have been casualties of the governor’s workforce reductions this summer. 

Applications for the downtown Sacramento job came from Suisun, Vallejo, Fairfield, Lincoln, Plumas Lake, Stockton, Wilton, Woodland, Vacaville, Elverta, Roseville, Orangevale, Davis, Antelope, Clarksburg, Herald and Elk Grove. 

There is a face to California’s sputtering economy – more than 298 of them for this one job alone. The tragedy is this is just one job opening. There are tens of thousands of other applicants up and down the not so Golden State struggling just as hard to find work.  Ten of thousands.

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