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The Sacramento Bee on May 1, 2007 reviewed the housing boom and bust in Merced county, emphasizing that the boom created thousands of construction jobs that drove the unemployment rate to the lowest levels in decades; the fear is that the housing bust may return unemployment rates to double-digit levels. Many investors bought houses in anticipation of a boom from UC Merced that has yet to materialize.

Major home builders in the San Joaquin Valley in spring 2007 reported layoffs of 25 percent of the workers they had employed a year earlier.

The Bee noted that despite high unemployment rates, thousands of San Joaquin Valley jobs go unfilled because they require skilled workers. Pacific Ethanol moved its headquarters and 30 relatively high-wage jobs from Fresno to Sacramento to get the workers it wanted.

Fresno county, which had a labor force of 422,000 in May 2007 and an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, has a Regional Jobs Initiative that aims to create 30,000 jobs paying at least $30,000 a year between 2003 and 2008. The RJI is likely to come up short (FresnoRJI.org). By the end of 2006, the Regional Jobs Initiative counted 9,700 additional jobs, including 5,000 in construction, one of the target sectors.

The Regional Jobs Initiative points to new partnerships and initiatives that it says are laying the foundation for well-paying jobs. The RJI has moved from marketing the San Joaquin Valley as a place of cheap land and labor to focus on supporting homegrown businesses that offer jobs paying higher-than-average wages.

The San Joaquin Valley often struggles to attract new businesses, with many potential employers deciding to go elsewhere because too many local workers cannot pass a drug test or lack high-school diplomas. Eight major companies offering over 5,000 jobs reportedly looked at the Keystone-Pacific Business Park in Patterson and cited the lack of educated workers as a reason for not moving in. Stanislaus county's Alliance http://www.stanalliance.com) estimated there were 209,000 adults with at least a high-school diploma within 20 miles of Patterson, and 92,000 without diplomas.

Hershey, the largest employer in Oakdale, California, announced the closure of its 575-employee plant in summer 2007. It opened in 1965, and wages averaged $17 an hour in 2007. Michael D'Antonio, author of "Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire and Utopian Dreams", noted that Hershey's tried not to lay off workers during the Depression.

Fresno mayor Alan Autry defends unauthorized foreigners, pledging to "stand in the doorway" if immigration agents attempt mass roundups in Fresno. Autry says that a "coalition of greed" sustains illegal migration, calling it a "a coalition that promoted and finally succeeded in institutionalizing illegal labor as a core component of our nation's economy. The coalition of greed knew they were creating a permanent underclass, but so what? It was more profitable that way."

Freeze. A five-day freeze beginning January 12, 2007 devastated the state's citrus crop, causing an estimated $1.4 billion in damages to agriculture. By May 2007, the California Employment Development Department had processed 9,223 freeze-related Unemployment Insurance claims, including 2,886 Disaster Unemployment Assistance claims.

Disaster Unemployment Assistance is available to workers in freeze-affected counties who do not qualify for regular UI benefits. DUA provides $144 to $450 a week for up to 26 weeks from the date the federal government declared a disaster, in this case on March 13, 2007.

Air. The San Joaquin Valley has some of the nation's worst air. The five US cities with the worst air, as measured by one-hour peak pollution levels, are Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, Visalia-Tulare and Houston. However, if air pollution is measured over eight-hour periods, the San Joaquin Valley has the nation's worst air, with September the worst month. About 16 percent of Fresno county children suffer from asthma, the highest rate in California.

The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District board in April 2007 asked federal authorities to give the San Joaquin Valley an "extreme" air status, allowing it to receive an extension to 2024 to comply with the Clean Air Act. Farmers, among others, say that cleaning up the air sooner will reduce jobs in an area of high unemployment.

Imperial-San Diego. The 2003 Quantification Settlement Agreement that provided for the transfer of up to 200,000 acre feet of water from the Imperial Irrigation District to the San Diego County Water Authority committed the IID and SDCWA to each provide $10 million to offset the negative socioeconomic impacts of land fallowing due to the water transfer, with mitigation funds spent by a Local Entity. SDCWA agreed to make additional payments to the local entity if socioeconomic costs exceeded the $20 million available.

IID argued that the cost to Imperial county of fallowing land to send water to San Diego was very high, up to $170 million. An economic report disputed that conclusion, finding that the multiplier effect of spending the compensation provided by San Diego was larger than that from farming additional Imperial land.

In May 2007, the SDCWA agreed to pay $40 million to compensate for the effects of farmland fallowing over 10 years, and the IID agreed to pay $10 million to offset economic losses and to assume responsibility for any future economic harm.

Napa. Napa County operates three farm worker centers, each of which can accommodate 60 solo male workers. These centers are managed by the California Human Development Corporation under the supervision of the Napa Valley Housing Authority. Its director, Peter Dreier, was forced to resign after using $1.4 million of the city of Napa housing reserve funds to cover cost overruns at the refurbished Mondavi and Calistoga farm worker centers in 2006.

The centers charge farm worker residents $11.50 a day with meals. The actual cost of housing and feeding workers in the centers is $27 a day. The new Napa County Housing Authority set aside almost $1 million to cover the expected farm worker center deficit in 2007.

Coachella. In the late 1990s, Riverside county cracked down on illegal mobile home parks that were home to many farm workers, saying they violated housing standards. In response, Harvey Duro, a member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, opened the Desert Mobile Home Park (known as Duroville) on tribal land near California's biggest illegal dump, now closed.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs wants to close Duroville, which houses 4,000 farm workers and their families, since the tribe is not enforcing its own rules on housing and safety. There are several other mobile home parks on the reservation, and BIA says all are unsafe.

Santa Paula, a 29,000-resident city in Ventura county, approved Measure A7 in May 2007 to expand city boundaries to allow development of 500 luxury homes in Adams Canyon. Two previous attempts to expand the boundaries of the farm worker-dominated city failed.

California. California had almost 38 million residents in July 2006, as the state continued to add a net 500,000 people a year. The city of Los Angeles, which had about 100,000 residents in 1900, had over four million in 2006. San Diego was the second largest city in 2006, with 1.3 million residents in 2006; followed by San Jose, one million; San Francisco, 800,000; and Long Beach and Fresno, 500,000 each.

California's state government is trying to achieve universal health care coverage; about 3.4 million residents have no health insurance. The legislature, controlled by Democrats, in June 2007 announced AB 8, a plan that would require employers to spend 7.5 percent of their payroll on the health care of their workers or pay into a state fund that would provide insurance to their workers. Insurers would have to spend at least 85 percent of their premiums on medical care.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who also wants universal health care coverage, would require all residents to buy insurance and require insurers to offer coverage to all residents. Schwarzenegger in January 2007 suggested a four percent play or pay mandate for state employers. The average annual cost for employer-provided coverage for a family was $11,860 in 2006, according to the California Health Care Foundation.

California has over 400 redevelopment agencies that under state laws can use eminent domain to take private land and turn it over to developers. Redevelopment agencies can also issue municipal bonds without voter approval and divert property taxes from schools and other government bodies.

David Kelly, "Mobile home park to get safety, hygiene check," Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2007. Steve Chawkins, "Fresno's flamboyant mayor has been an unexpected advocate for illegal immigrants," Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2007. Jordan Rau, "Sacramento Democrats merge health plans," Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2007. Dale Kasler and Jim Wasserman, "Housing bust leaves Valley in the lurch," Sacramento Bee, May 1, 2007. Jeff St. John, "Creating Valley jobs no small job," Fresno Bee, February 25, 2007.