In 2003, the Regional Jobs Initiative announced plans to add 30,000 jobs in Fresno and Madera counties paying at least $30,000 a year. Five sectors were targeted, including construction, health care, tourism, information processing, manufacturing, water technology and logistics and distribution. By the end of 2007, some 17,100 new jobs were added, over 40 percent in tourism. Employers in the other clusters say they cannot find qualified workers to fill the jobs they offer.

The unemployment rate in Fresno county has declined. Unemployment averaged 11.5 percent in 2003, fell to eight percent in 2006, and was 8.5 percent in 2007. However, it began climbing in spring 2008 and topped 11 percent in March 2008, when the state's rate was 6.4 percent and the US rate was 5.4 percent.

The city of Los Angeles was deemed a model for integrating immigrants, according to an April 2008 report of the Migration Policy Institute. The report urged more government spending to speed the integration of immigrant workers, including English-language instruction and ways of recognizing foreign education and experience. MPI reported that 43 percent of recent Latin American immigrants in California who entered the United States after they were 25 and who hold at least a bachelor's degree were working in unskilled jobs.

Duroville. On February 11, 2008, a federal judge took partial control of the Duroville mobile home, giving three outside overseers two months to make emergency repairs and bill them to owner Harvey Duro. Duro said that tenants have withheld $250,000 in rent, preventing him from making repairs.

Riverside county cracked down on illegal mobile home parks that were home to many farm workers in 1998, citing safety concerns. Duro, a member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians tribe, opened the 40-acre Desert Mobile Home Park known as Duroville. Its 350 trailers on tribal land house between 2,000 and 4,000 people, mostly Purepecha Indians from Michoacan.

The number of residents swells during the April-May Coachella Valley harvest season. A decision on Duroville is due April 28, 2008, as the 2008 harvest season ends.

On May 14, 2007, a fire allegedly started by a resident being evicted for not paying rent destroyed six trailers and led the Bureau of Indian Affairs to seek the closure of Duroville. Prosecutors charged a woman with setting the fire because she was prevented from removing the metal from her trailer to sell it; a jury acquitted her.

Duroville attracts tenants because there are a large number of unauthorized residents seeking low-cost housing. There are 30,000 people on waiting lists for federally subsidized Section 8 housing in Riverside County, and 10,000 people on a list seeking subsidized mobile homes, apartments and houses on a list maintained by the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition.

About 1.2 million California residents are covered by rent-control laws, including 230,000 who live in 150,000 mobile homes. Some 110 California cities and counties have adopted laws controlling rent for mobile home parks. An initiative on the June 3, 2008 ballot would phase out rent control on mobile home parks licensed before February 10, 1986- current tenants could remain at controlled rents, but when vacated, rents would rise to market levels.

Health Insurance. Since January 9, 2008, San Francisco employers with more than 20 workers are required to spend a minimum amount on health insurance, set aside money in health reimbursement accounts, or pay a fee to the city. San Francisco's 4,200-member restaurant association is suing to block the play-or-pay health-insurance mandate. Meanwhile, some restaurants are adding three to four percent to patron bills to cover the new health-care mandate.

Governors of California, Illinois and Pennsylvania proposed ambitious health care plans in 2007, but none were enacted. A California Senate subcommittee voted 7-1 against a plan that was negotiated by the California governor and the assembly in January 2008. The defeated plan would have required individuals to have health insurance and used government subsidies to help low-income residents pay premiums.

Jeff St. John, "In final year, jobs initiative plots its course," Fresno Bee, March 29, 2008. David Olson, "Duros," Press Enterprise, March 17, 2008. David Kelly, "Judge names overseers for Duroville," Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2008.