Fresno County's unemployment rate climbed in November to 12.1% as a gain in health and teaching jobs failed to offset losses in agriculture, trade, government and construction, the state Employment Development Department reported today.Freno RV dealer throws in the towel:
The jobless rate increased from 11.3% in October and 8.9% in November 2007. Officials noted that agriculture lost 4,500 jobs between October and November, and construction employment declined by 1,300 jobs in the year-over-year period. government also lost 1,000 jobs in that period.
RV king Dan Gamel, struggling with a lousy economy, closed all but one of his dealerships Friday and laid off 150 employees for three months while he sells motor coaches online and by appointment.
The Camp America store on Shaw Avenue and dealerships on Highway 99 in south Fresno, in Modesto and in Rocklin are closing until spring, Gamel said. The Redding outlet is staying open because the store is profitable, he said.
All the real estate -- totaling 85 acres with much of it on prime frontage -- is for sale.
"It doesn't make sense to be in business the way we are in this economy," Gamel said. "I thought we could make it and hang on, but every month brought a
more dire situation."
Gottchalks update:
Gottschalks Inc. announced this afternoon that it remains in negotiations with a Chinese company to keep the Fresno-based department store chain afloat.
Earlier this week, Everbright Development Overseas Ltd. terminated a deal it had reached in November to provide a $30 million investment in Gottschalks in exchange for a majority stake in the 104-year-old company. In a filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Gottschalks officials reported that Everbright had terminated the agreement following a due-diligence period that expired Monday.Retail industry analysts say the cancellation of the November deal is an ominous sign for Gottschalks unless another arrangement can be made very quickly.
5 comments:
On a happier note, the Roberson Realty office on Coffee Rd. is empty and has a "for lease" sign on it.
Now if we can just dispose of Re/Max, Coldwell, and Chicago Title in the same traffic corridor.
Perhaps then there will be vacancies for businesses that produce value rather than skimming money from RE transactions.
IdahoSpud
unfortunately converting unfinished tracts back to productive farmland isn't so easy.
So everyone knows where I am coming from on the whole "depression" thing...here is the definition from UC Berkeley professor Delong
Depression definition:
Defining Depression Down? Up?
Justin Lahart:
Real Time Economics: Defining Depression: Friday’s dismal November jobs report brings the old joke to mind: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours. The truth is that there is no good rule of thumb for a depression, like the two quarters of consecutive GDP declines that many people use for a recession. And unlike recessions, which are semi-officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research’s business cycle dating committee, there’s no arbiter to say that an economy has fallen so hard it’s in a depression.
In the old days, what we now call recessions used to be called depressions. The word recession only came into common use after the Great Depression, in order to distinguish garden-variety downturns from that epic crash. Sort of like the World Meteorological Association retiring a devastating hurricane’s name. That said, with the economy in the midst of what may be its worst downturn in the postwar period, it is worth thinking about what it would take to dust off the “depression” moniker.
Richard Sylla, an economic historian at New York University, says that his rule of thumb for a depression would be double-digit unemployment rates lasting for more than a few months. The only times that occurred in the U.S. were during the Great Depression and the 1890s. The deep recession that ended in 1982 briefly saw unemployment rise above 10%. Berkeley economic historian Brad DeLong’s definition of a depression is in a similar vein: Unemployment hits 12%, or it stays above 10% for three years. Rutgers economic historian Michael Bordo says he would define a depression “as a sustained decline in output of 2 or more years of at least 10% per year. If you look at U.S. history we only really had one such event.” –Justin Lahart
"Perhaps then there will be vacancies for businesses that produce value rather than skimming money from RE transactions."
I couldn't agree more.
Roberson moved across the street behind Chicago Title. Not gone, just less visible...
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