Walter Flores was unemployed for 8 months in 2014 but is now working in sales for Workforce Solutions in Compton; Credit: Brian Watt/KPCC

California's unemployment rate continued its decline in December, ending the year at 7 percent, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department.

But in Compton, Willowbrook and the Florence-Graham section of Los Angeles County, it remains about double that, data show.

“You might have work this week. But next week, you won’t have work,” said James Hicks, 36, 0f Compton. He's worked in warehouses through staffing agencies, but said the jobs have always been temporary.

Statewide, California has added jobs at a faster rate than the United States for three straight years, according to Robert Kleinhenz, Chief Economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. He pointed out the statewide unemployment rate is now where it was June 2008. 

"All in all, with the recession now five years back in our rearview mirror, we’re finally at the point where we can say that we have shrugged off quite a bit of the pain that occurred back during those times," Kleinhenz said.

The Los Angeles County metro area saw a net gain of almost 71,000 jobs in 2014.  The County's overall unemployment rate has fallen to 7.9 percent from 9.2 percent a year ago.

But Compton's unemployment rate was 13 percent in December.

“I’d rather have a  full-time type of gig, working 40 hours a week, but right now, even if you get 25 hours, it’s a blessing,” said Hicks, the warehouse worker in Compton.

On Thursday, he interviewed to be a guard with a security firm, but was told there weren’t any positions available. He had another security guard job six months ago that he thought might become full time and permanent. 

"It was going all right for about two to three months, until they cut my hours and days," Hicks said. 

Walter Flores lives in La Mirada but currently works as an account executive in the Compton office of Workforce Solutions. He was unemployed for about eight months last year after a car accident.

"Losing what you love to do is a tough one, but I'm back," he said. "2015 is going to be a great year."

Flores said most major warehouse and logistics companies prefer to hire temporary workers through industrial staffing firms like the one where he's working because their needs are sporadic.  

But he said it's still a potential opportunity.

"It doesn't matter that it's a temporary position, as long as you put your foot in the door, and then you let the employer know how much value you are for the company," Flores said.  

Hicks, who's earned a GED, wants to find a program to study physical therapy. But first, he’d like to find a job. 

He said you can't judge Compton’s residents by its unemployment rate.

"Some of us out here who [are] looking for jobs, but sometimes it’s the luck of the draw," he said. "It’s kind of scarce out there.” 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A New York appellate court ruled that a worker injured in an accident caused by a falling pipe should have been granted summary judgment on his Labor Law claim. Case: Jara-Salazar…

"After a few very awkward family holiday dinners, my son started to stay away if she was going to be there."

Falling In Reverse have announced that they have been forced to cancel three of their upcoming shows

A weak currency typically raises the cost of imports. That can lead to prices of food, energy and raw materials rising, aggravating inflation.

Indian stock markets have shown notable volatility over the past two days, with sharp declines unsettling investors and signalling potential shifts in market sentiment

The country that once served as an example for media freedom in the region - the first to decriminalize defamation and adopt the world’s most liberal media laws - has somewhat lost its shine. ...

SURAT THANI - Searchers have found and recovered the body of an Indian tourist who fell from a cliff while walking to the top of a popular waterfall on Koh Samui.

I guess it's now official. The real estate bubble has burst. When the inventory figures for homes show they are going up nationwide AND it's in the national media, you can be sure that it's already been happening for a few months now. The NY Times and Jouranl and just about every other news outlet decided today that it was a story - so I guess it's official.

Those of us in the real estate business have known it for the last 3 months and we could have told you so. We have sales figures and "time on market" statistics that can back up our claims. We have been telling successful sellers what's happening and how to price their homes accordingly. Now - 3 months later, the media is catching on.

The story is that the supply of homes on the market is rising and the number of buyers isn't. What that means to you is that your home will sit on the market longer without selling. In fact, two of the articles I've read state simply that it would take over 6 months to sell all the homes currently for sale. What they leave out is that more homes come on the market every day, further increasing the glut.

As the number of homes on the market increases, it takes further price reductions to get some of those homes to sell quicker, which, in turn, lowers the reflected market price of all homes. Sellers will wait and wait and then lower their price - too late. What they don't realize is that they are chasing the market down.

The market price of their home goes down and then they lower their price just above the market price and wait. While they wait, the market price goes down further, putting them farther and farther away from the market value, until they lower the price again.

So, as a seller, what should you do right now?

Simple, lower your price to a point that is BELOW the current market value. Ask your agent to take some time and do a good market analysis to get a feel for what your home is worth right now. Then, price it below that number. If you do this, you will have hungry and willing buyers lining up to make offers on your home... but only for a short time in a falling market. If you wait too long, and the market coninues to drop, then you will be priced above the market again and have to reassess the situation.

The smart thing to do is price your home low and let the market come to you, rather than chasing the market down. One strategy results in buyers, the other results in foreclosures. But you have to decide which strategy to persue.

The day I began reading Fr. Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward, I had just been fired from my job. This episode is a close reading of his book against that backdrop, as well as an exploration of the struggle for meaning, growth, and encounter in times of struggle.

Father Thomas Hopko remembers the last days of Fr. Alexander Schmemann on the 25th anniversary of his falling asleep in our Lord Jesus Christ. May his memory be eternal.

Join Michael as he takes a deep dive into what mercy is, why we often misunderstand it, why we sometimes misperceive God as harsh or even vengeful, and what we need to understand to open our hearts to God’s ever-present mercy.

The girls discuss the podcast-gone-Amazon series, Modern Love. They reflect on the nature of "modern" love, how love makes us vulnerable, and how true love calls us to become real. They close with their Top 5 Love Stories That Are Not About Romantic Love.

We consider the physicality of Matthew 17:1-13, 2 Corinthians 4:6 and 2 Peter 1:19-21 in the light of the experiences of Moses (Exodus 24 and 34), Elijah (1 Kings 19) Daniel (Dan 10:5-10) and the prophecy of Malachi 4. The transformation which comes in seeing and hearing God affects the whole of who we are!

We move on from the seven messages of the exalted Jesus, to see, through John’s eyes, the wonder of heavenly worship. Revelation 4 is in harmony with Old Testament Visions such as Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1, and Daniel 7, but suggests in its astonishing detail that God’s presence among us had been deeply enhanced through the actions of the Living One, Who was, and is, and is to come. The significance of thanksgiving as an essential characteristic of our service and worship is modeled for us by the hosts of heaven, both human and angelic.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we see a Father who has lost a child who bears his image, a son running from himself, and an elder brother who is glad he is not like his younger sibling.

Education choice is succeeding in other states

The Chicago Bears fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron on Tuesday, hoping to shake up a unit that ranks among the worst in the NFL.

As income from traditional fundraising methods starts to come under strain, a three-year project has been exploring new models of income generation for charities. Rebecca Cooney looks at the results so far

Boston — “A future with more frequent and severe storms” has heightened the urgency for protecting workers from injuries caused by falling tree limbs, a new safety alert states.

On the day of the incident, the owner of a gutter and siding installation company and his 47-year-old employee were installing guards on the existing gutters of a two-story home. The owner of the company did not provide fall protection, and the victim was not wearing any.

A 59-year-old foreman for a municipal public works department died after falling from the tailgate of a dump truck. The department had no comprehensive safety and health program.

A 20-year-old plasterer or drywall installer died after falling through a 24-by-48-inch plastic bubble-covered skylight.

A 41-year-old framer had been working for two weeks at a residential subcontractor at the site of a new apartment complex. The framer and a co-worker planned to use two scissor lifts in tandem to raise and insert a glulam wooden beam into the side of a horizontal I-beam more than 8 feet above the concrete floor.

Source: REX/Shutterstock Alexander Rutskoy, Russian Air Force General, was the man who brought Boris Yeltsin to power. Rutskoy has unveiled a few interesting facts from the history of Russia. The general said that Boris Yeltsin was drinking a lot during the coup in 1991 and tried to escape to the US Embassy. Rutskoy also said that after the collapse o the Soviet Union, Yeltsin called George H. Bush to report the news to the USA. When serving as vice president, Rutskoy defended independence and Constitution of the Russian Federation, especially in the days of the State Emergency Committee. Later, however, he changed his opinions. In an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Alexander Rutskoy spoke about the days, when the Soviet Union stopped its existence. He said that there was an urgent need to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power, appoint Nikolai Ryzhkov as acting president of the USSR, prepare a new candidate and then hold popular elections for the President of the USSR and the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR.Rutskoy said that he did not have even a shadow of doubt about whom to support in the situation of those days. "I swore as an 18-year-old boy to serve the Motherland and the people, and I have never showed disloyalty to the oath," he said.Today, Rutskoy does not conceal the fact that he had believed Yeltsin's promises about the defense of Russian interests. The vice president of the RSFSR, unlike those, who signed the Belavezha Accords, virtually had no access to the governance of the country. During the interview, Rutskoy said that Boris Yeltsin had tried to escape to the US Embassy. He also said that Gorbachev was not isolated from the world during the days of the State Emergency Committee. Gorbachev could be contacted via secret communication channels, and he was perfectly aware of what was going on. Rutskoy said that Gorbachev simply escaped prior to the signing of the new Unified Treaty. Gorbachev, Rutskoy stated, was executing the mission to destroy the country. It was Rutskoy, who escorted Yeltsin to Minsk,  only to find out later that the USSR would be dissolved. Rutskoy wrote a notice to terminate his powers of the vice president, but his initiative did not move forward. During the ratification of Belavezha Accords, he voted against it. Rutskoy and Yeltsin went separate ways when the latter appointed Gaidar, Chubais and Nechayev for key economic positions in the country. The three officials eventually made Russia experience an economic collapse. According to Rutskoy, the putsch in 1991 took place because Gorbachev betrayed his homeland and the people who were close to him in his team. The State Emergency Committee made a humble attempt to keep the Union afloat. The putsch in 1993 was a coup, which took place with the support of the United States and Europe. "There was an intelligence report saying that the White House in Moscow would be attacked. Yeltsin suddenly decided to go to the US Embassy. I was trying to stop him, I was telling him that he should not be doing it. I was asking him whether he was aware of the things that he was doing.  When they signed the Belovezha  Accorda, the first person, whom Yeltsin informed that the Soviet Union was no more, was George H. Bush," Rutskoy admitted. "Yeltsin was maintaining a contact with the US leadership to inform the Americans about successes of the unilateral surrender in the Cold War," he added.The book of memoirs by George H.W. Bush titled "A World Transformed" also says that Boris Yeltsin was cooperating with the USA for the collapse of the Soviet Union. "On December 8, 1991, Boris Yeltsin from a hunting lodge near Brest, in Belarus. Only recently elected President of the Russian Republic, Yeltsin had been meeting with Leonid Kravchuk, President of Ukraine, and Stanislav Shushkevich, President of Belarus. "Today, a very important event took place in our country," Yeltsin said. "I wanted to inform you myself before you learned it from the press." Then he told me the news: the Presidents of Russia, Belarus and ukraine had decided to dissolve the Soviet Union," George H.W. Bush wrote. According to George H.W. Bush, Yeltsin's tone changed after he finished reading his text. The signed documents, he continued, formulated the provisions that the USA had been advocating. Bush was unwilling to express either his approval or disapproval, so he simply responded with "I understand." 

Catawba County Home Health is empowering older adults to lower their risk of falling through a new service called Smart Moves.

As real estate agents, you face countless challenges and obstacles in your journey to success. It’s easy to get discouraged when things don’t go as planned, but here’s something every agent should consider, regardless of how long you’ve been an agent: Every failure is actually a stepping stone to greater achievements. This is the essence…

The post Falling Upwards: The Art of Failing Forward in Real Estate appeared first on RISMedia.

A New York appellate court upheld a grant of summary judgment on a worker’s Labor Law claim for his injuries from being struck by a falling object. Case: Tejada-Rodriguez v. 76…

A New York appellate court ruled that a worker struck by falling materials was not entitled to summary judgment on his Labor Law claim. Case: Shewprasad v. KSK Construction Group LLC, No.

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In honor of Valentine's Day, let The Moth whisper sweet somethings in your ear(buds). Stories of falling in love, enduring devotion, and romance that blooms in the most unlikely places—or between the most unlikely people. This episode is hosted by Moth Executive Producer, Sarah Austin Jenness. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.

Hosted by: Sarah Austin Jenness

Storytellers:

Inclement weather threatens David Greco's romantic plans for Jazz Fest. 

Eva Santiago reconnects with an old friend who is now in prison. 

Paola Ayala is worried that her mother found a private letter.  

Auburn Shaeffer and her husband share an unlikely first home. 

Matthew Mercier uncovers his parents' love story. 

Fall is the perfect time for help scientists conducting mushroom research

Titan Company experienced a 15% profit decline in Q2. The company attributes this to losses from a customs duty drop on gold. Despite this, Titan saw strong sales growth in its jewellery and watches segments. The company remains optimistic about the future, particularly the upcoming festive season. Titan is also closely watching the lab-grown diamond market and formulating its strategy.

Kentish singer’s second crack at a music career may lead to rich rewards.

Little bro might be moving a bit too fast.

From 'fruitless' dating to financial pressures, people share their views on falling fertility rates.

Are you the kind of person who needs to know what keeps satellites from plummeting to the Earth in a big, fiery ball? Then you need to watch this one-minute video, where Ask Smithsonian host Eric Schulze gives us the lowdown on what-in-the-name-of-science makes those satellites stay up.

From Scotland to Japan, these multiday treks offer adventure and a truly immersive experience

Have a photo you'd like us to see? Email us! Our address is nlphotos@cbc.ca.

The family of forklift operator Bill Sherstobitoff says that the company he worked for, the Great Little Box Company (GLBC), has not made enough of an effort to make things right in the two years since his death in December 2022.

TransUnion CEO Lee Naik shares five tips that could help to resolve financial strains.

Vijay wrote in the caption, "I fell and it went crazy"

Project numbers drop almost 40% between 2017 and 2018.

Solar power is now priced competitively with traditional forms of energy, which makes new nuclear power plants financially unviable.