Peggy Pico, Maureen Cavanaugh, KPBS
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
San Diego County officials say that the job market continues to improve but it has not been helped by a few recent announcements of layoffs and transfers in San Diego Cox can medications is laying off 500 employees and Sony is cutting 400 jobs and perhaps most troubling, WebSense is moving to Texas and taking most of its workforce with it. These cuts also indicated some troubles ahead for San Diego economy, I would like to welcome my guests Erik Bruvold and Murtaza Baxamusa. First of all let's start with the county's assertion that the health of the San Diego job market, Marney Cox over at SANDAG is quoted in the KPBS story about the layoffs and he says that the job losses don't reflect what is happening in the local job market and the unemployment rate is going down in more jobs are being created, Erik do you agree?
ERIK BRUVOLD: I think we looked year-over-year job growth San Diego is back into the positive area and starting to climb back up the lost decade for the great recession and that is all good, I would agree with Marty that things overall a pretty good. If you look specifically for the numbers the troubling trends that we have added jobs at the lower and of jobs for spectrum, a lot of service jobs and jobs in hospitality industry and those are important for people but they are not the kind of jobs that are equivalent to the wages that are paid in company like websites were Sony or even some call-center jobs being lost to Cox.