SACRAMENTO -- Although California's job market has continued to improve during the past year, the current economic expansion has not been strong enough to begin reversing decades of wage stagnation and diminished economic opportunity for many California workers, according to a new report from the California Budget Project (CBP), a nonpartisan policy research organization.

Beyond Recovery: Making the State's Economy Work Better for Low-and Mid-Wage Californians shows that the state has finally regained the number of jobs lost during the Great Recession, but that this job growth has failed to generate earnings gains for many California workers. In 2013, inflation-adjusted hourly wages for those at the 20th percentile of the wage distribution as well as at the median (50th percentile) were still around 5 percent lower than that for similar workers in 2006, the last full year before the recession began.

"With California moving further past the jobs crisis of the Great Recession, it's time to look at the big-picture challenges facing our state's job market," said Luke Reidenbach, policy analyst at the CBP and author of the report. "What's key is making sure that the recovery is reaching all parts of the state and also that there's growth in wages and opportunity for all workers, not just those earning high wages," the report said.

Beyond Recovery shows that:

Unemployment varies widely by metro region, with high rates in many parts of the state

Unlike in prior economic recoveries, persistent weakness in the public sector job market has hampered overall job gains

The share of Californian workers earning low wages has continued to grow, a trend that began before the Great Recession

Many California workers faced weak wage growth even before the Great Recession started.

Story Date: September 1, 2014