By james art 
By Manfred Kyle and Charles Bolverk | Economic Partnership in the Internal Empire
As we prepare for the likely impact of the policies of the inbound administration, and now in the beginning of 2025 this is an appropriate time to inventory. Conveniently, the employment development department in California has just released data on the labor market at the end of the 29 metropolitan statistical regions in California.
There are two studies used by EDD to draw the picture of the current status of the labor market: Household survey (current population or CPS) that relies on interviewing persons (60,000 households in the US) and a more big study for establishing (current statistics or CES for employment). Both contain information about the number of people working in an area, but CPS is more subjective as people have questions, such as whether they are looking for a job. CES cannot tell us the number of unemployed, since the establishments only list employees. CES contains information about the specific sectors in which people work.
There is an additional reason for the internal empire that we should pay attention to both studies and differences in the number. CPS includes traveling traveling, approximately 20% of the workforce of the internal empire, while CES only captures persons working for pay establishments in the Bernardino-ontario MSA River. The study of the establishment may show more or less change in employment than for the household survey. There are other reasons for both studies to differ, including if people work in several jobs, independent performers, concerts at concerts, etc., but they are in the second row.
Let’s start with (somewhat) good news.
For 2024, employment in the internal empire increased as reflected in both households (+17 600 or 0.8%) and the study study (+22 600 or 1.3%). In addition, as the labor force increased by the same amount as employment (0.8%), the unemployment rate remains the same (it actually fell slightly from 5%to 4.9%).
We need a gauge to compare this. Let’s go with comparison with time first. Our region did better than in 2023, when employment contracted by 9,000 or 0.4% according to a household study. This is mainly due to corrections in the logistics industry, which overestimated the need for employment related to transport after the post -coronavirus boom. It was partly reflected in the addition of 120,500 workers in 2021 (a height of 5.7%). Considering the first years of the Trump Administration, here are our first concerns: for 2017, 2018 and 2019, employment increased by nearly 50,000 workers for each of the three years (approximately 2.2%). We do not observe this type of numbers for 2024
Alternatively, how well did we do compared to the state and other areas in Southern California?
Los Angeles County showed more slow growth in the workplace than the internal empire as in the household study (increase by 0.3%) and in the study study (1% increase). The unemployment rate increased by 0.7 percentage points. The Orange District performed even more for both households survey (0.2%increase) and the creation survey (0.6%increase). Ventura County has a similar growth rate compared to La County, but shows a drop of 0.1 percentage points in the unemployment rate.
Lower row, we could classify 2024 as a slightly successful year on the labor market for the Internal Empire. In the last five years, after the start of the coronavirus recession, we have shown an increase in both labor and employment. Not so for the state where they both shrink.
California is still 400,000 employees who are less than the number of pre-division, coinciding with an increase in unemployment of 200,000, leading to an increase of 1.1 percentage points of unemployment to 5.5%. California now has the second highest unemployment rate among the United States in the United States (thank you, Nevada). While the unemployment rate of the internal empire also increased by a percentage of 3.9% to 4.9%, it did so while both employment and labor increase; The workforce increased by more (3.8%) than employment (2.6%). This is a healthier result than what state numbers show.
More good news comes from sectoral growth.
First, note that the internal empire relies largely on three sectors for its work. These are private educational and health services (indeed: health services), government (mainly local government and within that, educational services), logistics (transport, warehousing, wholesale trade). These three sectors make up approximately half of the employment in the internal empire. Remember that in addition, 20% of the workforce travel.
The good news here is that these three sectors continue to grow in 2024, generating 35,500 new jobs. Time to celebrate this increase of 4.2%? Yes, if your city has jobs in these three sectors, as employment has increased significantly in 2024, what is the bad news here? For the entire internal empire, the total number of work in all industries increased by only 22,600, which means that the rest of the economy combines jobs.
Here comes the ugly: almost all other sectors throw jobs in 2024. These were construction (-3 700), production (-3 300), information (-100), financial activities (-500), professional and business services (- 2,500), free time and hospitality (-900) and other services (-2,000). An exception is the retail trade, which showed a slight increase of 300 positions.
What makes this particularly disturbing are two facts: one, there is a weakness in the high -added value sectors in the internal empire, which causes so many workers to travel to the coastal areas. Many of the problems of the internal empire, and especially the clogged highways, can be solved if we find ways to attract these industries to our area. This would also reduce the heavy reading of sectors, with logistics that depend to a large extent on national economic activity (US imports) and therefore make us more vulnerable than the fluctuations of the business cycle. It also leaves the internal empire vulnerable to the potential tariffs of the new administration that will reduce trade. Second, this concentrated growth in only three industries is quite specific to the internal empire. While OC also scored a loss of 3600 positions in industries outside the three growth sectors, it was not so heavy. LA County, on the other hand, saw real growth in other industries in combination. The state as a whole is also experiencing a decline in other jobs (-23,000). However, almost half of them come from the inner empire (-12 700).
What does this mean to our immediate economic perspective in 2025? In the best case, there will be anemic growth in our area. This suggests that President Trump’s policies on tariffs and deportation will not have an immediate impact on trade and construction. In addition, there will be almost no growth in the jobs of the federal government. He also suggests that interest rates of the Federal Reserve will not have significant effects in the near future. No matter what we think the national economy will do, most likely, our region will not be tariff, as well as the US economy.
The mission of the economic partnership of the Internal Empire is to help create a regional voice for business and quality of life in the cities of Riverside and San Bernardino. His membership includes private and public sector organizations.