New construction and warehouse jobs
Nothing says construction is in a post-recession comeback like the cranes tilting up slab walls of a new mega-warehouse on once-rural fields in the Inland Empire city of Moreno Valley.
Fits Starts -SocialHere and throughout Riverside and San Bernardino counties, new construction and warehouse jobs like those at this future grocery warehouse rising alongside Highway 60 are helping to lift California's inland region out of recession.
But some caution that the recovery is fragile — built on low interest rates and moderate fuel prices — and that increases in either of those could undermine the latest economic gains.
Johannes Moenius, an economics professor at the University of Redlands, says job growth is finally outpacing population growth in the Inland area. But he has concerns.
"I'm worried not for the minute not for the day or the month," Moenius, said. "I'm worried for the medium run because we're just doing more of the same," in relying on construction and warehousing and other lower paid jobs.
Bankruptcy lawyer Arnie Wurhman saw the Great Recession up close. Riverside and San Bernardino counties were among the nation's top five regions for going broke. Most of his clients were in the real estate, construction and finance industries that had been lifted on the region's housing bubble, then crashed beginning around 2007.