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Green Economy in California Loses Jobs

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In California, officials were hopeful that the green economy would add more jobs and available employment throughout the recession which recently ended in 2009. However, a new report that was recently released shows that the green economy in California lost jobs, with less available employment opportunities and positions. However, even with fewer jobs, the cleaning technology companies in California were still doing better than the entire state of California in 2009.

Between the month of January in 2009 through the same month of January in 2010, the employment in the green economy of California actually decreased by about 3 percent. This information was reported by the Many Shades of Green report which was recently released on February 7th. In the meantime, however, the employment for the state of California had dropped by 7 percent. This proves that although the green economy employment decreased, it did not decrease nearly as much as the overall employment for the state of California.

The green economy in California is composed of different businesses that provide ways of conserving energy, relying on natural resources, reducing the amount of pollution in the air, and finding different ways in which waste can be used. A lot of these companies were, unfortunately, struggling in 2009, just as the recession was coming to an end. The Obama administration and officials in California believed the green economy was what would help the nation recover from such a crippling recession.

In the beginning of 2009, there were nearly 174,800 jobs within the green economy of California. However, by the beginning of 2010, there were only 168,754 jobs within the green economy of California, which was the first drop for the green economy.

Tracey Grose, the Vice President of Collaborative Economics, believes that while the green economy employment is not recession-proof, it is close to being recession-proof, as it did not have nearly as much of a decrease as the average employment levels in California. Grose also points out that the recession was huge and painful, causing a lot of problems for the United States, especially as it works to recover from such a tough recession.

Out of all of California, it seems as though San Francisco Bay did better than the vast majority of the state because it only lost about 2 percent of the green economy jobs. In the beginning of 2010, the Bay Area saw about a 28 percent decrease in available green jobs.

And, while 2009 was the end of recession and the beginning of the federal stimulus, the money for green jobs did not start to flow until a little while later. Things were tough in 2009 and it was only the beginning of when the money began to come in. It is expected that results for 2010 and 2011 will be much better.

Green Economy in California Loses Jobs by
Authored by: Harrison Barnes