Unemployment in California Is Pretty Low. It’s Also Pretty High.

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Monika Bauerlein,
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Have you been following the news less? A lot of people have, and that can be good and bad. It's unnerving, because Mother Jones has a $350,000 fundraising goal right now. In "Slow News Is Good News," we try to reset after several chaotic years and make a longer-lasting case for why our journalism matters. Please read it—and please pitch in!

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This is not motivated by anything in particular. I just happened to come across it last night:

January data for all 50 states is here. I chose to highlight California because it’s big and diverse and I happen to live there. There’s no special point I want to make except for the fact that a single state or national-level unemployment rate hides a lot of detail. Here in California, the Bay Area is fine. San Diego is fine. Los Angeles is fine. Sacramento is fine. But El Centro and Fresno and Santa Cruz and Chico aren’t all that fine (though some of this seasonal). It’s just one reason why the politics of inland California are so different from the politics of the 50-mile coastal strip that everyone thinks of as “California.”