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INLAND EMPIRE OUTLOOK | 2
The Inland Empire Strikes Back
The Numbers
A
n extraordinary economic development has recently occurred in the Inland Empire. Over the last eight months or so, the Inland Empire has seen larger employment growth compared to most other Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in California, and its unemployment rate has finally shown significant declines. The Inland Empire unemployment rate stood at 12.5 percent in January 2012, having fallen by 1.4 percentage points over the last eight month period (and an impressive 2 percentage points from a year ago). This compares favorably to California as a whole, which saw a decline by 1.0 percentage points over the same eight month period, and the U.S., where unemployment rates decreased by 0.7 percentage points. Unemployment rates, in general, peaked much later in California than in the U.S. For the country as a whole, this economic indicator started to decline as early as October 2009 (even though the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009). The Inland Empire and California did not see a peak in unemployment rates until over a year later, in December 2010.