We are pleased to announce that in November 2009, the Board of Supervisors of Santa Cruz County approved three workforce courses to be presented to County residents by The Bellows Institute.

The Bellows Institute, a division of The Bellows Foundation, is responding to an extraordinarily high unemployment rate in Santa Cruz County.  Further economic deterioriation in 2010 is predicted by knowledgeable individuals, including economist Marshall Vest of the University of Arizona.

Unemployment: October 2009, not seasonally adjusted:

• U.S.                                            10.2%                      17.5%                  7.3+

• Arizona:                                     9.3%                       17.2%                  7.9+

• Santa Cruz County:                 17.7%                     25.0% ?               7.3+ ?

The first column is the official unemployment rate.  The second column is the actual rate, which adds back unemployed who have stopped looking for work and under-employed residents who have been pushed to part-time work due, to economic conditions.  The third column is the difference, which suggests that the official unemployment rate is substantially misleading.   The U.S. Department of Labor buries the difference in a line item titled “Alternative  Measures of Labor Underutilization.”

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