Unemployment

It’s only May, and I’m already having to write about wildfires forcing Californians to evacuate their homes. Around 1,000 people were displaced from their homes Sunday as the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles County grew to more than 1,300 acres. The blaze, which was 0% contained as of Sunday afternoon, carved a path through dense, […]

Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing a mask dilemma. If he updates the state’s mask guidance to align with that of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which on Thursday announced that fully vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks or physically distance in most places — he risks contradicting his own […]

“Everything that should be up is up and everything that should be down is down,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in January when lifting California’s regional stay-at-home order. Today, that statement holds true for many aspects of California’s pandemic response — vaccinations are up, infections are down, hospitalizations are down — but rings hollow when it […]

While the governor's opponents have burned through most of the money they've collected to date, his defenders have some $2.5 million in the bank.

Good morning, California. It’s Tuesday, April 27. Census + recall What a day Monday was. First, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that California will lose a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in the state’s 171-year history. Then, Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced that supporters of the effort to […]

It’s a troubling trend: For two out of three months in 2021, California’s unemployment rate shrank partly from thousands of people dropping out of the workforce. The Golden State’s unemployment rate hit a pandemic low of 8.3% in March, down from 8.5% in February, according to figures released Friday by the Employment Development Department. But […]

Good morning, California. It’s Friday, April 16. Nearly halfway there California is at its pandemic best. No counties are left in the state’s most restrictive reopening tier. California has the lowest coronavirus positivity rate in the country. And 49% of eligible residents are at least partially vaccinated — a number sure to have crossed the […]

Alonso and his wife have been unable to afford rent during the pandemic. They share a one-bedroom apartment with their four children.

Good morning, California! It’s Monday, April 5. I’m CalMatters politics reporter Ben Christopher, filling in for Emily Hoeven, who is enjoying a much-deserved week off. A “gold rush” amid the calamity This much is not news: California’s Employment Development Department, the state agency responsible for shelling out unemployment claims to millions of jobless Californians, is still […]

The state’s unemployment agency has signed $236 million in private contracts as jobless workers await benefits. EDD says it needs the outside help.