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The 19-county Central Valley has a growing population despite lagging economic growth, according to a study released by the Great Valley Center in January 2005. California's average per capita income was $33,000 in 2002, but only $23,500 in Fresno county, the major farming county in the US. The state's unemployment rate was 6.7 percent in 2003, but 14.2 percent in Fresno county.

Population growth between 1990 and 2010 is projected to be 32 percent for California and 42 percent for Fresno county.

The Valley's labor force has been growing faster than the number of jobs, up 11 percent between 1998 and 2003, compared to 10 percent more jobs. Of the 10 US metro areas with the highest unemployment rates, six are in the San Joaquin Valley. If the Central Valley were a state, it would be number one in farm sales, except for California, but per capita income of $24,500 would rank it 47th, above West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi. Housing prices, which have been lower than average, are rising with immigration and internal migration.

The 2000 poverty rate in the San Joaquin Valley (20 percent) was significantly higher than the national rate (12 percent) and California rate (14 percent).

Some agricultural areas are booming. The Imperial Valley- a desert region of 160,000 people in southeastern California- is in the midst of a building boom, with developers hoping that commuters to San Diego will make the 100-mile one-way trip to afford homes that cost less than half the median $500,000 in San Diego. Some 18,000 single-family detached homes are slated for construction in the Imperial Valley, as government employment expands for Border Patrol agents and guards at nearby prisons.

However, the key to Imperial county's development probably lies across the border in Mexicali, the largest Mexican city along the 2,000-mile border that had no regional shopping mall on the US side until the Imperial Valley Mall opened in March 2005. Developers are scrambling to build new stores, and Mexicans with money are buying homes and goods on the US side. Calexico, a city of 33,000 where nearly 80 percent of the school district's children qualify for subsidized school lunches, depends on visiting Mexicans to sustain the city's economy. According to one estimate, Mexicali families whose incomes average $8,000 a year spend about $1,600 a year in the US.

In northern California, there is an effort to replace logging with tourism. Shasta and seven other Northern California Shasta Cascade counties are increasingly advertising themselves as vacation destinations for nature lovers rather than sources of timber.

Timber processing capacity in the region fell by 50 percent in the 1990s, prompting the search for alternatives. Ecotourism won more acceptance among local residents after 1991, when a freight train derailed just north of Dunsmuir in the upper Sacramento River gorge, spilling 19,000 gallons of potent herbicide into the water and killing everything in its path for almost 40 miles. The city of Redding developed the 300-acre Turtle Bay Exploration Park with its Sundial Bridge to persuade those driving by on nearby I-5 to stop and explore nature.

The Salinas Public Library, which had been threatened with closure because of budget problems, will remain open on a limited basis through December 2005 after volunteers raised $500,000. Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, and many of his novels such as The Grapes of Wrath (1939) are based on conditions there. Americans spend about $25 a year for local public library services and check out an average of six books a year.

Education. D-Q University, California's only college run for and by Native Americans, closed in February 2005 after it lost its accreditation and $1 million in federal funding. D-Q University was founded by a group of Native Americans and Chicano activists who in 1970 occupied a former Army communications center in Yolo county for months until the government agreed to allow the 643-acre site to be turned into a tribal college.

D-Q was accredited in 1977 and offers two-year associate degrees, and its troubles started when it started a child development program for Spanish speakers that became so popular that Latino students outnumbered Native Americans, which prompted the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reduce funding because less than half of the students were Native American.

D-Q is one of 34 tribal colleges in the United States. The "D" in the school's name stands for Deganawidah, the "Great Peacemaker" who helped found the Iroquois Confederacy. According to school literature, the "Q" represents Quetzalcoatl, "an Aztec prophet who symbolizes the principles of wisdom and self-discipline."

Asians have often been seen as a model minority with above average educational levels and incomes, but an analysis of 2000 census data reported that 66 percent of Hmong adults in California, 58 percent of Laotians and 56 percent of Cambodians did not finish high school, and 53, 40, and 32 percent, respectively, had incomes below the poverty line. Education levels and poverty rates were even higher for these groups in the San Joaquin Valley.

California had 36.6 million residents in July 2004, reflecting 551,000 births, 235,000 deaths, and a net 284,000 immigrants. The net population increase of 600,000 was 20 percent of US population growth, and means that the state needs 200,000 to 250,000 new homes each year, 250,000 to 300,000 new jobs, and place for more than 400,000 more cars.

Housing. California's housing bubble is spreading to agricultural areas, with Chico and Stockton topping the list of cities with the most unaffordable housing in one 2005 study. Salinas and Watsonville topped one list of that compared median-priced existing homes and median incomes in Fall 2004.

Median home prices were $405,000 statewide at the beginning of 2005, and only about 60 percent of California households, compared to 69 percent of US households, own their homes. About 210,000 homes were built in 2004, with demand put at 200,000 to 250,000 a year. Legislation pending would promote affordable housing by favoring higher density projects on vacant urban land, so-called in-fill projects.

California has about 208,000 civil service employees, including 178,000 organized in unions, and they protested plans by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce their wages and switch from the current defined benefit pension plan to defined contribution pension plans. In return, allies of the governor threatened to revive Proposition 226, defeated by California voters in 1998, which would require public-sector unions to get permission from their members before spending any money on political lobbying.

All states except Utah and Hawaii have legalized some form of gambling. Some smaller states that have casinos while their larger neighbors do not, such as Delaware, receive almost 10 percent of state funds from gambling. California is negotiating with tribal casinos to increase the state's take from casino profits.

Ann M. Simmons, "Logging Visits Rather Than Trees," Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2005.